Gray or Blue
by theseveremercy
Summary: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions. (Modern AU. Enjolras/Éponine.)
1. i

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

She did it for Gavroche, mostly.

True enough, the temptation to get away from her parents was tremendous motivation, too (she'd had enough of living in filth, of seeing the money they stole and swindled disappear into more schemes, or, more often, drugs) but if Éponine thought it was best for her little brother that she stay with them, she would have.

"_I suppose you don't care if your parents end up in jail. You know with your father's health condition he can't do proper work, and if I have to start robbing banks to feed this family, you'll be sorry, little missy!"_

"_Health condition, my ass. Leave off those meetings behind the petrol station and see how long your 'health condition' lasts."_

"_If you don't want your brother to starve, Miss Éponine, you'll be grateful and take the job your father found for you!"_

"_Yeah, and you better be nicer to Montparnasse than you are to us, or he might decide he doesn't like you as much as he does now."_

"_Charming," she had said._

But she was tired of seeing Gavroche go to bed red-eyed and hungry. And living in a hovel by herself on the other side of the city and working in Montparnasse's stupid coffee shop still beat home life.

That's what she told herself when she woke up that morning at 4:45, shrugging on her coat over the worn sweater she had slept in and grabbing a chunk of a 20-pence baguette to make it to her 5 AM training at Thebes. ("It's a classical reference," Montparnasse had explained, patting the tips of his product-saturated hair. She was tempted to ask him to elaborate, just to see him fumble for bullshit.)

Montparnasse had been demonstrating how to use the espresso machine, narrating extensively as he scooped and ground and stirred. Éponine shivered and tried to stay awake. It was still January, and too early in the morning for the shop to be warmed up yet. It would be better when the shop opened and there were others besides the two of them.

"Who else works here?" she asked suddenly.

"Oh, there's Jules, and Eva, a few hours a week. I just wanted to spend some time with my new employee." He dropped her a wink that made her skin crawl, and stifling the urge to roll her eyes was actually painful.

Still, it was kind of nice watching the steam curl up from the machines, and the heady smell of coffee sent some warmth curling into her belly.

"Your turn," Montparnasse said, leaning against the counter and cocking his hip to one side so that his absurdly tight t-shirt rode up to show a sliver of hip.

"Just a shot?"

"No, you need practice steaming the milk, too."

She faked the confidence, shaking the powdery grounds into the basket and tamping them down.

"Pack it harder," Montparnasse murmured, his mouth suddenly and disturbingly close to her ear. She shoved her shoulder back to push him away.

"God, 'Parnasse, give a girl some room to breathe."

"It has to be packed just right for the perfect shot," he insisted. She rolled her eyes but obliged him anyway. _Slide the basket into the filter, shove it up into the machine, and hit the button._

"You forgot the—"

Too late, she grabbed a cup to shove under the spout, but missed the first few dribbles.

"Don't worry." He chuckled and leaned in, and she could smell his cheap cologne. "With practice, you won't make any more silly mistakes."

"I'm sure I'll catch on," she said sweetly, and flicked on the steam to drown out whatever he planned on saying next.

By Thebes' opening time at 6:00, she could make a decent latte, and something that could pass as a cappuccino to someone who didn't know better. Montparnasse assured her she'd get the hang of the foaming. She ignored the probable innuendo in favor of the morning sun finally shining in the front windows and the two or three trial coffees that were jumpstarting her system. She began to hope that maybe the job wouldn't be so terrible, so long as Montparnasse kept his hands to himself.

He flipped on the neon "Open" sign at the front of the store and turned around. "Now go clean the bathroom."

"What?"

"Toilet, sink, mirror, and floor." He shot her a nasty smile. "There are supplies in the top shelf in the left-hand closet. Let me know if you can't reach."

Deliberately, she grabbed a chair and stomped over to the closet.

By 11:00, she hadn't made a single drink. She had, however, cleaned the bathroom twice, mopped up the milk Montparnasse overturned in the kitchen, wiped down all the tables repeatedly (god, people are animals), and taken out three bags of trash that were as big as her body. She tried to think about the Euros adding up on the day's paycheck instead of her aching back and throbbing feet. She tried to make herself think about Gavroche.

Still, she couldn't help wondering when the day would be over.

"Hey, do I get a shift schedule or something?" she asked Montparnasse. Neither Jules nor Eva had showed up yet.

"Yeah, you know, we just kind of see how it goes each week," he answered, eyeing her critically. "If you really want to, I can give you some hours off, but—" he lowered his voice—"your dad made it sound like you wanted all the work I could give you."

She tried not to stiffen. "I was just curious."

A little before 1:00, Montparnasse told her to take a half hour lunch break. She had tried, probably without success, to keep her longing gaze away from the pastry case, but she hadn't tried hard enough, because Montparnasse leaned one arm against the counter and said, "You _can _eat here, but half the cost comes out of your paycheck."

_Fine, then._

She trudged back to the flats and up the rickety stairs to her room, boiled water on the hot plate and then sat on the mattress to eat a styrofoam cup of noodles. By day, the room looked even worse: cracks on the ceiling, peeling wallpaper, stains she didn't even want to think about on the vaguely beige carpet. Now that she was outside of the shop, she could smell the coffee on her clothes—not rich and comforting anymore, but sour and old-smelling.

_This is it, now_, she told herself. _This is your life. You'll get used to it._

She was still hungry when she slurped the last of the noodles out of the mug. The caffeine rush from earlier was utterly used up, and Éponine wanted nothing more than to toe off her tennis shoes and curl up on the bare mattress under her ratty yellow fleece blanket.

Instead, she groaned, more of a growl through her teeth, yanked her coat back on, and jerked the door open, trying not to think about the hours until closing.

* * *

A/N: If you made it this far, thank you! This fic originally started as a daydream in my marketing class ("lol what if I wrote an E/É coffeeshop au?") but then I couldn't concentrate for the rest of class and knew I had to write it. The title is from the song by Jaymay. More to come! I've already posted it at my tumblr [youwerejustakid] but, by popular request, am finally getting around to putting it up here.

Your comments mean the world to me!


	2. ii

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

Montparnasse skipped out early that night, two full hours before the closing time painted on the front door, saying something about a business deal he had to see to.

_Strippers or cocaine? _Éponine wanted to inquire. She bit it back. "Anything I should know about locking up?" she asked flatly while he hung up his apron and shrugged on his leather jacket. She couldn't help noticing the way he rolled his fingers like they were stiff and then cracked his knuckles.

"Mop the floor and lock the door when you leave," he said, turning to give her a lazy smile. "You'll figure it out. You're a smart girl."

_Smart enough to know a condescending ass when I see one._

He pushed halfway into the back room, presumably leaving from the back door, when he turned around one more time. "Oh, and if any of the Les Amis come around, don't let them in."

"The Les Amis?"

"Ugh." He waved his hand through the air. "Drunk college students who want to blow up the _Assemblée_. They hang out in the bar downstairs most nights. I don't want them making trouble in here, got it?"

"Fine," she answered airily. The door slammed behind him.

Fifteen minutes before closing—well, eighteen minutes, but it was impossible not to round down—there was a banging at the back door. Éponine, who had been dozing off on the stool she had dragged behind the counter, almost fell off. The only remaining patron, a 50-ish man with a stack of notebooks, gave her a frightened look.

She slid off the stool and tensed, listening. It came again, several _thunks _like someone was kicking at the back door, and then indistinct shouting—definitely male—that sounded like Montparnasse's name.

If his sketchy affiliates murdered her on her first day of work, she was going to rise from her grave and haunt him till the day he couldn't take it anymore and killed himself.

She slammed her hand down on the telephone by the cash register. "Call the police if you hear me scream," she ordered the man, who gaped, wide-eyed. Grabbing two huge mugs by the handles to use as clubs, if need be, she pushed into the back room.

Whoever was out there was still kicking. The doorframe shook.

"_Montparnasse_!" yelled a voice, followed by a stream of curses. "Honest to God, we don't want to make trouble! We need urgent medical assistance!"

That gave her pause.

"So call an ambulance!" she yelled.

The banging stopped.

"You're not Montparnasse?" said the muffled voice. Then, "Look, he really is losing blood at an alarming rate, can't you—"

"_Call an ambulance!_" she shouted again.

There was a garbled sound of frustration. "Marius here says he's too drunk to go to the hospital and that it would be a stain on his stupid reputation! So it will be BOTH your faults when he dies of gangrene!" The last word was punctuated with another kick at the door.

Against her better judgment, she shifted both mugs to one hand and opened the door.

A young man clutching his right hand to his chest blinked in the light spilling out from the back room, blue eyes huge and disarming and slightly unfocused. He held out the hand he was clutching.

"It's not that bad, really," he insisted. She looked down to see a hand embedded with shards of dark glittering glass, smeared with blood that he was apparently trying to catch with a ratty dishtowel.

"It obviously is that bad, Marius," burst out his slightly taller companion, who appeared to be holding him upright. He was also apparently the one who had made all the noise, judging by the way he was shaking his foot in the air. "Do you have anything resembling a first aid kit?" he asked Éponine with exasperation.

"We need to get the glass out first," she murmured, examining Marius' hand with a critical eye. As she watched, more blood trickled onto the towel, and she sighed. "Fine. Come in."

The taller one swept in, practically dragging Marius, who was insisting that he couldn't really feel a thing anyway and didn't want to bother anyone.

"Shut up, you idiot," muttered his friend as she led them into the kitchen, setting her would-be weapons on the counter. The remaining patron shot her a wide-eyed look as they emerged, standing by his table with his notebooks clutched to his chest. She waved dismissively, and he hurried out the front door.

"Thank you, whoever you are," said the taller one, propping up his friend on Éponine's stool and holding him in place. "Also, if you have a bag of ice, I would greatly appreciate it, since I may have broken a toe kicking your door. Maybe two. It's certainly bruised. My toenail will probably fall off tomorrow."

"What happened?" she asked, yanked open a drawer she had seen earlier with paper clips, scissors, tiny screwdrivers, and the like, rummaging for anything that would work for tweezers.

He snorted. "This idiot tried to get into a bar fight while he was still holding his booze. Literally. As in, holding the bottle in his hand."

"I got him, though," said Marius dreamily.

"No you didn't. He tripped on the rug when you swung at him, and then you hit the pool table," said his friend grimly.

"Nice," she said, pulling out a pair of grimy, oversized tweezers that looked intended for machine repair more than human use.

"Anyway, I'm a med student, so I'm pretty much certified to deal with injuries like this, but someone apparently stole the bar's first aid kit, so—" He started sputtering when he saw her tweezers. "Are those even sterile?"

She blasted the steam on the espresso machine and shoved them under for a few seconds before wiping them on a paper towel. "Are now." He still looked a bit unsure, but she took Marius' hand again, carefully, and bent close to begin the delicate work. It was harder with the bigger tweezers, but she'd had practice. The bloody shards clinked softly when she dropped them in the sink.

"Éponine," she said, not looking up.

"What? Oh. I'm Joly. This is Marius."

"There's ice in that freezer if you want to help yourself."

"Thank you. Marius?" Joly shook his friend a little, which jostled his hand, which meant Éponine had to pull back for a moment. "Marius? Can you sit up by yourself?"

"Wonderful," said Marius, but when Joly gingerly let go of him, he sagged backward against the counter, somewhat stable. Joly went to find the ice, and Éponine, having picked out all the biggest pieces, set to work on the smaller, deeper ones. At least the dark glass made the tiny slivers easier to see. She knew from experience this part hurt the most, and Marius began tensing and moaning, the pain apparently piercing his alcoholic fog.

"I'm so sorry about this," he murmured to her. "I'm never this drunk, really. Never. I don't even drink, usually."

"Ha!" said Joly from behind her.

"I don't!" he insisted. "Not, like, _drink_-drink."

"Don't worry about it," she said, smiling in spite of herself.

"So, Montparnasse isn't gonna be coming back any time soon, right?" asked Joly nervously.

"Nope, he's out on 'business,'" she muttered.

"Did he, uh, mention—"

"He told me not to let any Les Amis into the shop," she said, looking up at Marius, then looking over her shoulder at Joly, who was sitting awkwardly on the floor with a bag of ice on his foot, knee pulled up to his chin. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Oh. Well…"

"We're glad you did," said Marius, almost singsong.

"Marius!" hissed Joly.

"I pretty much knew already," she told them, picking out the last splinter of glass. "Since you brought up the bar fight. And it was obvious you and Montparnasse don't get along."

"What exactly did Montparnasse say about us?" Joly asked.

She hummed, peering under the counter for the first aid kit Montparnasse had mentioned earlier. "He said you're a bunch of drunk college kids who want to blow up the _Assemblée_."

"Well, we don't want to blow up the _Assemblée_," Marius pointed out as she pulled out the kit and popped open the lid. "At least, I don't think we do. Should we talk to Enjolras about blowing up the _Assemblée_, Joly?"

She actually heard Joly smack his forehead.

"How about we get your hand cleaned up first so you can defend yourself in prison, hmm?" she said, unscrewing the cap on a bottle of rubbing alcohol and tipping it over some cotton pads.

"I hope you can handle a little more alcohol," she told him, and then dabbed at his hand. His entire body flinched, and she pulled back the pad for a moment, glancing up at his face. He was pale as paper and biting his lip bloodless, but otherwise seemed okay, so she resumed.

"If you have to punch Bossuet over billiards, just remember to put your bottle down first next time," Joly said reasonably. Marius nodded stiffly as Éponine kept swiping and dabbing. At last, the bloodflow had almost stopped.

"Do you have bandages?" Joly asked, craning his neck to see what was going on.

"It'll heal faster if you leave it open," she told them. Joly still looked dubious. "Wrap it at night, if you have to, but other than that? Uncovered."

"He'll probably need a tetanus shot, too," Joly sighed, pushing himself off the floor. "Hopefully I don't need a cast for my toes." He stooped to fling Marius' good arm over his shoulder and helped him stand. Marius groaned softly.

"Come on, Marius, let's get you back downstairs," Joly muttered. "Or home. Or something."

Marius craned his neck to see Éponine over Joly's shoulder. "Thank you for fixing me up," he slurred.

Joly straightened slightly. "I'm afraid we haven't given you a very good impression of the Les Amis," he said apologetically. Éponine shrugged and opened the door so he could half-carry Marius through.

"Well, I know you kind of _are _drunk college students, that you don't really want to blow up the _Assemblée_, and that some of you play billiards," she said with a half-smile. "Is that a bad impression?"

Marius snorted, and Joly smacked him on the shoulder. "There's a lot more to it than that," he said seriously. "You should come to our meetings in the bar downstairs sometime. To see what we're all about."

"And what's that?" she asked, opening the outside door. They all shivered in the sudden cold night air.

"Fighting injustice, mostly," Joly said after a moment, shrugging.

"Enjolras says it better," Marius murmured, head lolling forward.

"Enjolras always says it better," Joly huffed. "Thank you, again," he told Éponine, before stepping out into the dark.

"You should come!" Marius called back, and the last thing she heard was Joly hissing at him to keep it down, people were trying to sleep.

A/N: I swear this is an E/É fic. Hand to God. At least his name was mentioned this chapter, right? Right? I promise, it's coming! In case anyone's wondering how long this is going to be…good question. Right now, I'm thinking around 20 chapters, but it keeps expanding on me, so who knows? I would just recommend hanging on tight.


	3. iii

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

Getting up was harder the second morning.

It had been after midnight by the time she forced open the door to her flat—which required a good shove with her shoulder—and her alarm went off at 5:20. The cold air breathed goosebumps over her body, and it took every ounce of willpower to tug off her pajamas in the chilly dark and fling a towel around her shivering body. The good news was that nobody else was awake to use the hall bathroom; the bad news was that it took all twelve minutes of her shower for the water to heat up.

She was plugging in the hair dryer she had stolen from her mom when it occurred to her that it was 5:35 AM. Her neighbors would hate her if she woke them up at this hour. Great. She cursed, threw the hair dryer down on the mattress and grabbed a knit hat. As much as it sucked to walk to work with wet hair, making enemies in her shithole flat this early in the relationship was an even worse idea.

Still, by the time she reached the backdoor to Thebes, she was almost wishing she had chosen the angry neighbors—she was shaking so hard it took her four times to get the key in the hole, and her muscles were clenched so tight they ached. To her surprise, when she stumbled in the door, the shop was already warm.

Montparnasse was stacking huge sacks of espresso on the shelves, but when she opened the door, he turned around.

Éponine's mouth fell open. Shitty as she felt, Montparnasse looked worse: his lower lip had a nasty black scab on it, purple-green bruising stained one side of his face, and his nose looked slightly off-kilter. Well, more off-kilter than usual. He looked exhausted, too: both eyes were bloodshot, with drooping bags under them.

"Morning, sunshine," he said, cracking her a surprisingly pleased grin that took her aback.

"What, did you have a 3 AM drug deal that went south?" she asked, aghast.

He tested the scab on his lip with his tongue, still grinning. "Don't ask too many questions."

Éponine snorted and hung her bag on a hook, yanking off the now damp, cold hat, too. "Right. Don't talk about Fight Club. My mistake."

"Hey," he said, glowering, turning towards her and pointing his finger threateningly.

She held up her hands in mock surrender. "No questions, got it." She paused, thinking fast. "But I get to work the counter."

"Yeah?" he snarled, not relaxing his posture.

"With your face like that, you'll scare off anybody who comes in," she told him matter-of-factly. Silently, she catalogued her defense: palm to nose, other fist to the side of his head, knee to the groin.

He stared at her for a moment before laughing. "All right, smartass. You make the drinks today. But you're lucky I had a good night." He winked at her and then turned back to the stock. Judging by the way he favored his left side, Éponine was willing to bet he had a bruised rib or two, as well.

"Your hair looks terrible, by the way," he called smugly as she pushed into the shop, and she flipped him off without looking back.

Faking courtesy to everyone who came in was unpleasant, but it still beat scrubbing the toilet, so Éponine sucked it up and tried to remember to smile. Which was even harder when people gave her hair strange looks. When the convent school down the street let out in the afternoon, a whole table full of young teenaged girls actually stared openly. _Bitches_, she thought crabbily, shooting them a glare. _You try letting your hair freeze to your head and then dry. See how it goes for you._

* * *

It was late evening, and she was half-inside the cabinet under the sink trying to reach a new bottle of sanitizing cleaner, when someone cleared his throat, loudly.

"One second," she grunted, finally reaching the bottle of clear before extricating herself and standing.

The first thing she saw was a bouquet of daisies.

The second was the grinning face over them.

"Hi," said Marius. "Um, I don't really remember you—well, I mean—anyway, but you probably remember me. Er, not to be presumptuous or anything—"

"You hurt your hand," she said, not even trying to hide her grin.

"Yeah," he said, and laughed. "Yeah I did. Oh!" He held out the bouquet. "This is a thank-you. For patching me up."

She took it slowly, painfully conscious of her hair and its utter dreadfulness.

"I'm Marius," he said unnecessarily. "I guess Joly might have told you that last night, though."

"Don't worry about it," she said, peering down at the flowers. _What do you even do with flowers?_ "I'm Éponine."

"Nice to meet you," he told her. The sincerity in his voice took her aback. He smiled, not just with his stretched-wide mouth, but with his whole face, earnestness pouring out of his eyes. Something in her stomach fluttered.

"How is your hand?" she blurted.

"Oh you know. I'll think I'll pull through." He held up his hand so she could see the thick scabs criss-crossing it.

Just then, as someone left the café, the wind banged the front door shut, and Marius visibly winced at the loud bang.

"Oh god," he said. She tried not to laugh as he rubbed his temples.

"Hangover?"

"I am never drinking again," he swore.

"I've heard that one before," she said lightly.

"But I mean it," he insisted, smiling anyway.

"Would some coffee help?" she offered, gesturing towards the machine with her bouquet.

He looked up at the menu board. "Uh—"

Something banged in the back room and she inhaled sharply. "Oh, damn, I forgot, Montparnasse is here," she whispered. He looked confused. "Should you be here?"

"Oh," he said. "No, I'm new—I mean, I don't think he knows who I am yet. But—" he glanced out the window—" I probably need to get going."

"Yeah?"

"It's a—meeting. Thing." He shifted uncomfortably.

"Well." That sounded suspiciously like code for "get drunk and play billiards" to her, but it was none of her business. Still holding the bouquet, she put her other hand in her pocket and cocked her hip. "When you don't have another meeting-thing, you should come back for coffee, since you're flying under the radar and all."

"I'm sure I will," he said with a grin. "Oh! You should come. Not tonight, but…Thursday? Yeah, Thursday."

"What time?" she asked.

"Oh, like, 10." He waved his hand in the air vaguely.

"We don't close until 11…."

"That'll be fine," he said quickly. "Just come down whenever you get off. That works."

Someone banged on the glass, and she and Marius both looked to see a tall, broad guy gesturing towards Marius impatiently, tapping his wrist like a watch. A couple others were with him, and she noticed that one of them was Joly, who nodded at her in acknowledgement.

"I do need to go," he said apologetically, backing out of the cafe. "But I'll see you Thursday?"

The last thing she wanted to do was go hang out with some drunk students instead of going home and going to sleep, especially when said drunk students could get her in serious trouble with Montparnasse.

"I'll be there," she heard herself say, and Marius grinned, waved, and pushed out of the café.

* * *

A/N: Enjolras has still not shown up. I know. I am crying with you. But soon...very soon...


	4. iv

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

Éponine counted down the hours to Thursday night as Marius' bouquet slowly wilted.

She had gone home and, tugging the shoelace out of an old, dirty pair of sneakers, used it to tie the bouquet upside-down to the bare curtain rod above her window. Once, she had heard that you could dry flowers that way and keep them forever. She must have done something wrong, though, because the full, bright daisy petals shriveled up until they looked like limp scraps of tissue paper that fell and made a mess on the end of her bed. The bouquet didn't smell particularly nice, either, and she had started sneezing a bit, but at least it gave her something to look at as she fell asleep at night.

Thursday brought several surprises. The first one was the winter storm that blew icy snow in her face the second she opened the outside door. She gasped in a lungful of freezing air before wrapping her scarf around her face and crossing her arms against the wind. Swearing the entire way helped block out the cold, but by the time she got to Thebes, her hair—which she had blow-dried the night before—was wet and limp.

The second surprise, however, was less unwelcome, waiting for her when she pushed in the back door.

"I'm Eva," said a pretty, red-haired, very pregnant woman, extending one hand.

"Éponine," she said, taking the hand, forcing a smile and trying not to gape at Eva's stomach or say something like _Should you actually be standing up right now?_ or _Just so you know, if you go into labor on the clock, I am definitely not equipped to handle that._

"Twins," said Eva, patting her stomach with a weary smile that spoke of uncomfortable sleepless nights and back pain. "I'm only thirty weeks along, actually."

_Thirty weeks…nine months…thirty times four—no wait—_

"So two more months to go!" Eva interrupted her thoughts with a rueful laugh.

"Right," said Éponine, imagining Eva scrubbing the toilet on her hands and knees, inhaling chemical cleaner fumes. She sighed. "You take the counter."

Still, even though it was back to trash duty and floor-mopping, Eva was better company than Montparnasse—less unsettling, anyway, even if she talked about prenatal vitamins the whole time. And at lunchtime, when Éponine's stomach growled mortifyingly loud, Eva offered to buy her lunch.

"Don't worry about it," Éponine said stiffly.

"Seriously, I'm just paying you back for doing all the work," Eva told her. "That's the deal. Obviously, I'm pretty much becalmed at the counter."

Éponine looked outside, where it was virtually snowing horizontally, and her stomach gave a piteous wail. "Fine," she said, and it only came out slightly ungracious.

Another surprise arrived with a bang. Probably due to the weather, probably, things had been relatively quiet at Thebes, but nearing closing time there was a loud rasping noise at the front of the café, like someone was struggling with the door. Éponine, who had been leaning against the counter listening to Eva talk about folic acid, turned around just in time to see a young man in a huge coat finally wrestle the door open, only to have the wind catch the door, flinging the young man inside, where he staggered into the nearest table. To make matters worse, his long scarf caught on the doorknob and yanked him off his feet so that he overturned the table and the large stack of dishes that had been sitting on it. There was the sound of china shattering, and then the man groaned.

"Oh my _god_," said Eva, horrified.

"Please tell me Montparnasse isn't here," moaned the man from the floor.

"You're lucky he's not," Éponine said sourly.

Strangely, he laughed at that, and then groaned again. "Next time Joly is getting his own damn coffee," he muttered, pushing himself to his knees and looking at the mess in dismay. Éponine moved over to help before Eva would try. The man was trying to right the table, but as soon as it was upright it let out a groan and then fell over as a leg broke off.

"Shit!" he muttered, trying to make a pile of the broken dishes. "I am so sorry, really, I'll pay you back. Oh god. Shit." He had sliced himself on a cracked mug.

"It's fine!" Éponine burst out, even though it wasn't. "Stop. I'll clean it up." She pressed her hand to her forehead and looked at the heap of what used to be a table and dishes, now a lethal splinter-zone. "I really don't want to clean glass out of anyone else's hand," she muttered.

He looked up at her from his knees, suddenly smiling. "You're the one who helped Marius!" he exclaimed. "Joly mentioned you." He flushed. "Also, he wanted me to make sure that none of Marius' blood was left on the coffee implements."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Joly is a little paranoid, isn't he?"

"Joly is Joly," he said simply. "Oh, and I'm Bossuet."

"Éponine," she answered. "And that's Eva, and she'll get you your coffee. Please try not to break anything on your way to the counter."

He flushed again, getting to his feet. "I do have terrible luck, but the good news is that my accidents rarely happen the same way. It's like constantly getting struck by lightning but never in the same place twice."

"Small mercies," she said dryly, and went to get a broom and dustpan. Bossuet did make it to the counter safely, and she heard him apologizing repeatedly, with admirable passion. She managed to get all the smashed dishware up without slicing herself, sweeping the shards too small to be picked up into the garbage sack.

There was, unfortunately, nothing to be done about the table, or the chair next to it which now seemed dangerously wobbly, so she leaned them both against the wall and prayed for deliverance from Montparnasse's wrath in the morning.

She tied off the garbage sack and tossed it in the trash can before turning around to see Bossuet clutching four coffees against his chest and grinning.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, grabbing two drinks out of his hands on sheer reflex.

"Are you coming?" he asked brightly.

"Coming? Oh." She remembered Marius' smile, and nervous excitement quivered in her stomach. She looked back at Eva. "Um, do you think you can close up tonight? I have a thing."

Eva looked dubious, but Bossuet's earnest apologies must have charmed her into a forgiving mood, and, since the café was empty, she waved her hand and said it was fine, so Éponine and Bossuet ducked out into the cold.

Bossuet turned left around the corner, and stopped by a beat-up door she had seen without really noticing. Still holding the coffee, he banged his elbow on the door by flapping his arm. Coffee sloshed out over his fingers.

"Let us in!" he yelled, inclining his head toward the door. He tried again. "Joly!" he yelled. "I brought the damn coffee!"

"So," Éponine tried, "this is the Les Amis?"

"Yep," said Bossuet, stepping back from the door, apparently deciding to wait things out. "We're the Les Amis. It's actually kind of a pun. The whole name is Les Amis de l'Abaisse." She stared blankly. "You know, because it sounds like ABC."

"And…what do you do?"

"Well," he said thoughtfully, frowning down at the coffee. "We're an unofficial university club that's trying to spread awareness about the troubling political actions taken by our government."

"So you fight injustice?"

"More or less," he said. "But Enjolras says it better. You'll hear him explain stuff tonight." Just then, someone shoved the door open and almost hit Bossuet in the face. "Hey!" he snapped.

"Sorry," said the man holding open the door. Bossuet shouldered past him.

"Careful, there are stairs," he called back unnecessarily, since he was already three or four steps down. The man eyed her up and down, and she narrowed her eyes at him as she squeezed past.

"Who's this?" he asked, padding heavily down behind her.

"Marius' friend. Uh—"

"Éponine," she supplied.

"Right. She's here for the visitors' night." Bossuet stopped to hold open the curtains at the bottom. "Speaking of visitors' night, I can smell your breath from here. Didn't we agree on no getting drunk?"

"I must have been passed out by that point," he said smartly, extending a hand to Éponine. "Grantaire."

She held up both hands with the coffees. "Ah," he said, and plucked one out of her grasp. "Nice to meet you. Hey, Bahorel!" he called, wandering off. "Is there any of that Jack left?"

"You came!" Marius had elbowed his way through the crowd and was now beaming at her. For a second he looked as though he were going to hug her, but turned it into a shoulder-pat at the last second, looking embarrassed.

"Someone had to help Bossuet carry the coffee," she said, smiling back. His smile was infectious. Her shoulder tingled from where he had touched it. "How's your hand?"

"Look at this," he exclaimed, holding up the wound and wiggling his fingers. "I can almost bend my fingers without splitting the scabs open."

"Congratulations," she told him.

"That means I can kind of type again," he insisted. "You have no idea how hard it is to write code one-handed."

"You're a programmer?" She didn't know too much about computers personally, but growing up as a Thenardier meant she was at least conversant in all sorts of topics. Her father had dealt with cokehead hackers on more than one occasion.

"Yeah, I mean—yes. I'm in school for programming. And I do stuff for the Les Amis, too." He shifted foot to foot, and she bit back a grin. "Speaking of," he began again, "I would introduce you to some people, but we're about to get started, so I have to go talk to Combeferre really quick."

"Right, sorry," she began. "I know I came late—"

"No, I'm glad you did," he cut in, grinning again. He started to back away. "Oh! And there's free beer for coming."

She could have sworn she heard choirs of angels sing.

Bossuet scurried over to snatch the other coffee out of her hand with an apologetic "thanks!"

"Beer?" she called before he disappeared, too, and he pointed wildly over the crowds to somewhere across the room.

Sighing, she squared her shoulders and plunged into the fray. Being skinny and sharp-cornered was good in a crowd. She slipped between backs and ducked under upraised arms, ready to use her elbows if need be. There probably couldn't have been more than forty people or so—mostly university students, by the looks of it—but the room seemed especially cramped because of all the tables and chairs. Most of them weren't in use; they were just shoved aside or into each other and seriously hindering her path to the alcohol.

Near the edge of the room, she crouched just in time to avoid one gesticulating arm and nearly ran into a chair, jammed solidly sideways between two other tables that were hemmed in solidly on both sides by more students.

Someone was actually sitting there, blond curly hair bent over a spread of papers spilling out of a file folder, fingers tapping the eraser end of a pencil against the side of black spectacles. His face was half-hidden from where it was leaning against his hands. But she could still make out a firm, stubbled jawline and sharp cheekbones, which, for some reason, amused her—one of those empty-headed model types dragged into an activist meeting. _Leave the pretty misanthropes at home for the next visitors night_, she thought with a smirk.

There was no getting around the tables, though. Sighing, she planted one booted foot on the seat of the chair, stepped up, and jumped down the other side. The table rocked as her weight jarred the chair, and she turned to steady it. The pretty student—who, she realized as her stomach momentarily bottomed out, was actually a good deal more than _pretty_—was staring at her with slight incredulity.

"Sorry," she shrugged, shoving into the crowd again. "Free beer."

She claimed her bottle ("limit one, sorry," said Joly, who was manning the bar) and retreated to an empty spot on the wall to observe the room. It was overwhelmingly guys—_all guys?_ No wait—she saw someone with long hair braided with a purple ribbon, fuzzy pink sweater and greenish-yellow paisley pants, who turned around—_oh, okay, that's a dude._ She caught a glimpse of Marius, talking to someone who—she assumed—was Combeferre. He pulled something out of his pocket—a cellphone?—and pointed at something on the screen, gesturing and talking animatedly. Combeferre nodded intently, brows furrowed. He turned suddenly.

"Enjolras!" he called, catching someone's eye and nodding sharply.

Whoever Éponine expected to rise and claim the name of the elusive Enjolras, it certainly wasn't the beautiful student from earlier. But when she turned to look, it was him who was climbing to stand on the table he had been sitting at, brandishing his file of papers as he prepared to speak. Someone she couldn't see interrupted him, shouting "_En-jol-ras! En-jol-ras!_" and other voices caught on.

"Recent events," Enjolras shouted over the noise, "have made it impossible for us to persist in ignorance and apathy any longer."

The rowdy students who had just been chanting, nearly everyone buzzed from the beer and a few already drunk, quieted.

Éponine, for her part, was impressed that not only was he unironically giving a speech while standing on a table, he was actually succeeding at it.

From his folder, he pulled out a handful of papers. The folder he let drop to his feet. Files skidded out over the table and fell to the floor. He ignored them and held a newspaper high to show the headline, which she couldn't see from her angle. "_This _is the kind of government corruption that we have allowed to happen!" he called out, and murmurs of agreement rippled through the room. Then he quieted. "This week makes twelve unethical, amoral, exploitative corporations that have received grants from taxpayer money," he said, voice like a knife in the dark.

"We have the names of the officials who voted for these measures. And, thanks to Marius," he nodded at him, "we also have the names of those officials who have stock in the corporations." He flung one more file down on the table. "Now, Les Amis," he asked, an ironic twist to his lips, "what should we do about it?"

After a moment, the room exploded with noise. People shouted questions or accusations she couldn't make out and, over the noise, Enjolras shouted back responses or rebuttals she didn't always understand. There were laws she hadn't heard of, names she didn't know.

_I should go, _she thought. _Slip out before these idiots all get drunk and decide to bomb the government._

This wasn't her fight, and she could hardly grasp what was going on.

She did catch one reference, though.

"How do we know the Les Amis won't go the way of _Sans_?" shouted someone.

Éponine stiffened, along with everyone else in the room. _Sans Visage_, as the full name went, had shut down bank servers, released highly classified financial records, and even gone after government security, if all the stories were true. But everyone remembered Sans for the incident two years ago, when a tipoff had led to rampant arrests and a notorious case of police brutality.

Her father had been paid well for that incident. The government was not above stooping to the gutters.

"We will do what we have to do for justice," Enjolras answered evenly.

Éponine wondered how she had ever thought he was pretty. He was fierce and sharp, like ice that burned between your hands.

No one else spoke, so Enjolras stepped off the table with unembarrassed ease. As if on cue, the heated conversations resumed again, and Enjolras disappeared into the throng.

Taking a gulp of her beer, she almost sputtered when she realized it had grown warm between her hands. Marius appeared at her elbow, grinning and flushed with excitement, and she swallowed her mouthful quickly.

"What did you think?" he asked, his eagerness easing away the tension that had coiled in her chest.

"Lovely words," she told him, delicately gesturing with her beer bottle. "Not sure if I'm enough of an optimist to believe them."

"We'll make a believer out of you if you keep coming back," he said with a grin.

_I doubt it_, she thought, but she watched the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, and tried not to smile too widely back.


	5. v

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

Éponine was sure it was going to be a terrible day when she overslept her alarm from staying out so late, consequently didn't have time to shower, and ran all the way to Thebes, but all in all, it could have been worse.

When she turned up the alley behind the shop, Montparnasse was out back, slinging what Bossuet had left of the table into the dumpster. He spat on the pavement, muttering indistinct obscenities before he turned and saw her.

She set her jaw automatically, prepared for an onslaught of rage.

"You know what happened here?" he inquired grimly, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to where the splintered table legs stuck out pathetically from the top of the dumpster.

"It was just some idiot tripping over his own feet," she hedged, watching him closely. _Maybe I can get out of this if he just docks my paycheck_, she thought. _Not that I'm gonna volunteer it._

"It was the bald one, wasn't it?" Montparnasse chuckled, and then she smelled the alcohol on his breath. "Eh, you couldn't have known he was Les Amis."

She automatically widened her eyes to feign surprise.

"Guess I know now," she said. If showing up to work slightly inebriated meant Montparnasse was less of an asshole, she wasn't going to complain.

Montparnasse smirked and opened the door about a third of the way, gesturing to let her walk in ahead of him. She gave him a look but squeezed by him anyway.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, shutting the door behind them, "you'd be almost attractive if you ran a comb through your hair every so often."

"Pull your head out of your ass, then we'll talk," she shot back. His raspy laugh hardly sounded mocking.

* * *

About two weeks into her job at Thebes, Éponine stumbled into some kind of normalcy. She could make a cappuccino that was markedly distinct from a latte, her body grudgingly accepted the sustenance of five or so hours of sleep each night, and she began recognizing the faces that drifted in and out of the café.

There were two old men who came in at opening time Wednesdays and Fridays, each with a different newspaper. They each ordered Americanos with one sugar, which they hardly ever touched. They just sat, reading their newspapers and never talking, then switching to read the other's paper until they had finished both newspapers, at which point they left them on the table with two mostly-full coffees and sometimes a tip of a Euro or two.

Surprisingly, the man with the stack of notebooks who had been probably frightened out of his wits by Joly practically banging the back door open and Marius bleeding all over the floor, came late at night Tuesday and Wednesday. Éponine thought he was probably some professor at the university; what else would one person be doing with so many notebooks if not grading? He didn't tip, and at closing time she always had to wipe down every table around him several times and clear her throat loudly before he'd leave, but he drank lattes at a—_frightening, but impressive,_ she thought—rate of two an hour. Business for Thebes meant a paycheck. So she didn't complain.

Then there was the girl who came in often, if not regularly—usually in the bright hours of early afternoon. Well, "girl." She was probably around Éponine's age, maybe a little younger. She had floated in one Friday afternoon wearing some sort of flowery lacy dress, ordered a caramel mocha with a too-kind smile, and then sat down by the window with a sleek laptop and a stack of beautifully bound novels, sipping and typing delicately the whole afternoon. Usually, she brought headphones too, and would inevitably stop typing to stare dreamily out the window, circling her foot or drumming her fingers, evidently lost in some song or another. Éponine glared. There was something indefinably unlikable about her, despite the fact that she reliably left a euro on the table and chirped a "thanks!" when Éponine brought out her coffee.

Maybe that was it. She was too sweet. Mochas were pushing it, but caramel mochas? You couldn't even taste the coffee anymore. Éponine had a secret theory that anyone who liked caramel mochas probably wasn't worth her time.

Then there was Marius, who never showed up at a reliable time but still came in two or three times a week: in the late evening, before a Les Amis meeting, or rumpled and slightly tipsy when in the early morning, when she suspected he had been there all night. About Marius, she had learned many things. One, he was lactose intolerant, which she had only learned on his sixth visit, after he had insisted on sticking with espresso.

"I'm beginning to think you don't trust me to not screw up your coffee," she finally told him one night.

"I'm lactose intolerant," he blurted, rubbing the back of his neck with undue (and endearing) embarrassment.

She couldn't help laughing at him. But the next morning, she cajoled Montparnasse into buying soy. (It took a little flirting, but he'd had one of his good nights, so she won him over in the end.)

She also learned that Marius was rich, or at least used to be. Not that he would ever tell her. She read it in the scratched cellphone he used, in the cut and stitching of the worn sweaters he wore, in the way he never looked at the prices or stopped to count his change.

She had been taught these things in order to take advantage of people—here a little slice, there a little cut—but with Marius, she merely wanted to grab him and shake him by the shoulders, to yell at him to be more careful, to warn him: _I'm not kind, Marius, but I'm a lot kinder than lots of people._

Once he came in the middle of the day, right before her lunch break. She was trying to hard not to think about the fact that—without a Les Amis meeting—he had no other reason to be around that she forgot about lunch entirely. Marius had leaned against the counter for the better part of an hour, rambling aimlessly about something ridiculous Joly had done or the latest crap Bahorel had spent his money on or the latest stupid drinking game that had ended up with Marius getting hit in the back with a cue stick and nearly put Bossuet in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.

"It's nice to have a friend who isn't part of all their shit," he groused, glancing up and giving her a crooked smile that softened the hollow growls of her stomach for the rest of the afternoon.

(She stole a pastry from the case, too, since Montparnasse was out.)

* * *

Two weeks in also meant Éponine got her first paycheck. Montparnasse slapped it down on the counter in front of her in a wrinkly envelope. She tore it open. _Not as much as I deserve for this shit, but better than nothing._ She used her lunch break to take care of it.

"Can I use your phone?" she asked Montparnasse when she got back. He gave her a suspicious look. "Local call, promise," she added, so he shrugged and handed it to her. She leaned against the wall in the alley out back and called the payphone outside her parents' apartment. It rang, once, twice, three times, and then she hung up. Waiting a breathless moment, she redialed.

Gavroche picked up on the second ring.

"'Ponine?"

"You _are _at home," she breathed into the mouthpiece.

"Long as I feel like it," he snorted.

"Yeah, well, I don't like the thought of you on the streets, got it? At least you got a roof over your head."

"_Yeah, well_," he mimicked, "you sure jumped at the chance to leave."

She bit her lip. She reminded herself he was just a little boy.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he muttered.

"How are things?"

"Been better. Mom's back on the drink again."

"Don't try to hide the key. But get out of the house."

"I know," he said, a bit irritated. "Can't do much when Dad joins her and locks us in, though." She squeezed her eyes shut. There was a pause and then he said, quietly, "Miss you."

"I miss you too," she whispered. Something banged inside, in the back room, and she straightened up. "Gav, I got my first paycheck."

"Are we rich?"

"I'm sending most of it to you, alright?"

He caught on quick. "One check for me, one for Mom and Dad?"

"Right. Don't let on."

"Obviously." She wanted to laugh at his world-weary scorn, and then she wanted to cry.

"Hey. Mail will take a few days to get there. You have to stay till your check comes, got it?" Silence. "Got it?"

"Till the check comes," he said finally. "But no promises after that."

"In two weeks, there'll be another check," she reminded him quickly.

"No promises, 'Ponine." He sounded small and tired.

She didn't want him disappearing onto the streets of Paris. She wanted him safe and healthy. But she could still see the fists and hear the screaming when she closed her eyes.

"Fine. No promises," she told him gently. "Love you."

"Yeah, okay," he groaned. She grinned and waited for the _click _before she hung up.

* * *

That night, she dreamed she was at home again.

She was climbing in the window to her old room, from the fire escape, and calling softly for Gavroche. She yanked back the covers on his bed, but it was empty, and someone grabbed her arm.

"Where's the money, 'Ponine?" her father breathed hotly into her face. She screamed and jerked away, but her mother caught her.

"Where is it, you selfish bitch?" she shrieked, hands like claws that scrabbled at Éponine's neck. Hands pushed her, pulled her to the floor, held her down—how were there so many hands?—and she covered her head with her arms when she saw them holding the bottles by the necks.

Blows rained down and the glass shattered into her body, again and again, but they didn't stop, no matter how much she screamed and writhed and curled in on herself. The hands dragged her back, held her in place while the glass bruised her, cut her open.

The floor became an ocean, a thick, dark, salty ocean that tasted like metal, choking her, drowning her.

Then hands touched her face, and arms cradled her body and lifted her out of the red-black pain, into light and warmth. A face bent down over hers, with earnest eyes that crinkled with his smile.

She woke up sweating and tangled in sheets, but kept her eyes shut, trying to hold onto the dream for as long as possible.

* * *

She couldn't go back to sleep, so for once she made it to work in plenty of time. It was a Friday, and Eva was working with her. As usual, the two old men came with their newspapers in the morning, and Éponine tried not to feel the dreadful hope that Marius might come.

Her stomach lurched when, early that afternoon, he pushed into Thebes.

Her heart felt full and her tongue felt thick as he approached, the sun lighting up all the flyaway bits of his hair, and she still couldn't speak when he reached the counter and leaned against it, like he had done so many times.

She was opening her mouth to say something, anything, when a gust of wind from the front door announced the entrance of someone else.

Marius turned around to see who it was, and the caramel mocha girl, the girl with the novels and the lace dresses, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed, stared back.

* * *

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! Chapter 6 should be up in the next hour or so, then we'll be caught up with tumblr. =)


	6. vi

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

Her name was Cosette.

Not that Marius had found that out for himself.

No, the girl had recovered herself first, breaking Marius' gaze to look down at her hands and then taking her usual seat by the window, still slightly pink.

Marius turned around and she saw the spark in his eyes. He braced his hands on the counter. "Oh my god oh my god," he sputtered, just quietly enough so that the girl might—_might _—not hear him. He covered his mouth with a fist so the next few "oh my gods" came out muffled. "Who is that?"

She felt cold and far away. "Just some little rich girl," she heard herself say_. Just some girl with nice clothes and hair she doesn't have to hide under a hat and someone who gives her nice books and money for coffee._ "Who actually braids ribbon in their hair, for god's sake?" she snorted softly. Marius wasn't listening. He was sneaking another glance over his shoulder, where the girl was answering her cellphone.

"At the café, Papa," the girl was saying, hand resting on her half-opened computer, studiously ignoring Éponine and Marius. Her face seemed to fall. "Yes. Yes Papa." She hung up, and as she closed her laptop and slid it back into her bag, perfectly tousled curls falling forward to hide her face. The next moment she was out the door and disappearing from the window.

Marius moved as if to follow her, and Éponine grabbed his wrist on instinct. "Don't chase after her, you idiot, she'll think you're a crazy stalker!"

He turned quickly and placed his other hand over hers. "Help me find her."

The warmth of his hand and the look in his eyes pinned her. _I'm not going to help you on your creepy-ass stalking mission._

What came out was: "How?"

"I don't know, aren't you the street-savvy one between the two of us?" He dropped her wrist and dragged a hand over the side of his face. "Ugh."

"She paid with a card a couple of days ago," Éponine said dully. He looked up, confused. She half-shrugged. "So I can look up her name on the receipt."

His dejected expression broke into a slow smile. "You're brilliant," he said.

"It's pretty illegal, you know," she told him, but she was already opening the cash register.

_Ultime Fauchelevent_, was the name printed on the credit card receipt, but it was signed _Cosette Fauchelevent_.

"Cosette," breathed Marius over her shoulder. He thanked her over and over again, called her the best friend he'd ever had, even hugged her, and all of it sent tingles dancing over her skin.

"You owe me big time," she informed him.

"Yeah, okay. I've gotta go find her. Or figure out where she lives. God, that does sound stalkerish." He laughed. "I'll see you later!" She watched the door bang shut behind him, and the tingles faded.

* * *

That night, when Montparnasse was locking the door behind them, she asked if he knew any place to get a drink.

His mouth slowly curled into a smirk as the lock clicked shut. "Is this you asking me out for a drink?"

"Hardly," she said. "I'm just after the booze." She shrugged. "I can't stop you from coming, though."

He took her to a cramped, dark, smoky bar several streets over. She drank until she couldn't feel anything, and spending the night vomiting into the toilet was more her style than crying herself to sleep, anyway.

* * *

Cosette didn't come back to Thebes for several days after Marius had first seen her. He, however, was there every day, sitting across from her usual spot, hands clenched around a book he never read or poised on his laptop keyboard to write some sort of programming for the Les Amis, something about a "barricade project" (which he never got around to either). He insisted he didn't want to bother Éponine, so she brought him a soy latte and then left him alone. Some days Eva worked, so she didn't have to man the counter, didn't have to watch Marius tense up whenever a young woman walked in front of the café.

Then, a week after the first meeting, Cosette came back. Marius pushed back his chair and stood, and she froze in the doorway, clutching her bookbag.

Éponine dumped a whole sack of espresso beans into the grinder and pummeled the button. A blaring, wheezing drone filled the café. She shoved through the door to the backroom to do inventory, and when the grinder shut off and she came back out, Marius and Cosette had disappeared.

Then she didn't see either of them at all. At least they're not snogging by the fireplace, she thought, but it was almost worse to imagine where they could be, what they could be doing.

Marius evidently wasn't going to the Les Amis meetings, either, judging by the way groups of two or three university students kept stopping by, poking their heads in to peek around. She recognized Bossuet once, and he waved, but he stayed safely outside and away from Montparnasse.

One afternoon she was wiping a table near the door when she saw Joly squinting through the glass, shading his eyes with one hand and, from what it looked like, carefully breathing through his sleeve with the other. She tried to gesture to let him in, but he shook his head with an apologetic smile and then hurried off.

Montparnasse was gone, Eva was practically on bed-rest, and whoever "Jules" was, he still hadn't shown up, and Éponine was bored out of her mind. She was half thinking about crashing the Les Amis meeting that night. _Visitors' night be damned_, she thought. Nobody had told her there was a meeting, but of course there was a meeting, at least in the broadest sense of alcohol and billiards. _Never tried billiards, but I'm sure as hell good at the alcohol part._

But Marius turned up that evening. One moment she was reorganizing the refrigerator to fit in a new carton of cream and the next she was turning around to see his breathless smile, chin in his hand on the counter.

Her heart stuttered; she couldn't help it.

"Hey _monsieur_, what's new with you?" she asked lightly, mirroring his position on the other side of the counter.

"_Cosette_," he sighed, eyelids falling shut. "I swear, Éponine, she's like nobody I've ever met."

"So I guess you found out where she lives," she muttered sardonically.

"She climbed out her window last night after her dad fell asleep and we—well." He blushed. "Talked. But she's busy tonight."

"So do you want coffee, or are you here to moon?"

"Cut it out." He laughed. "I just…god. I can't describe the way she makes me feel."

_I bet I could._

"I can't believe I never would have seen her if I hadn't been here with you," Marius said, shaking his head incredulously. His eyes met hers. She couldn't breathe. "You're a good friend, you know, fixing my hand, helping me find Cosette." He glanced around. "I suppose this is my lucky café, huh?"

"And Bossuet's unlucky café," she said dryly.

He laughed. "Bossuet is unlucky no matter where he goes."

"Maybe you stole all his good luck, since you've been having so much of it lately."

He grinned again, tugging at the front of his hair. "I feel lucky. Luckier than I deserve."

Nastily, she decided to prick his bubble of joy. "So how's your barricade project coming?"

He pulled back, scratching at his ear. "Um. You know. I've been distracted lately." He chuckled. She found herself smiling automatically.

There was a muffled buzz. He had whipped his phone open in seconds to read the text. "Aahh, her tutor canceled!" he burst out, thumbs tapping out a quick response back. "I've gotta go, I'm really sorry."

"Fine," she said distantly. "It's fine."

Then he left, there and gone in five minutes altogether.

* * *

The next afternoon, Éponine was viciously scrubbing the calcium build-up on the metal guts of the espresso machine when the front door opened, and she glanced up to see none other than the handsome blond leader of the Les Amis, Enjolras himself. The six or seven convent girls that always clustered around the corner table suddenly giggled, but he didn't react, just loosened the thick grey scarf around his neck while he squinted at the menu. Standing on the floor instead of a table, and wearing his glasses again, he was less fierce than she had last seen him, but still beautiful enough to catch her off-guard.

"One second," she said, yanking out the brush before fitting the metal plate back onto the machine. "What can I get you?" When she looked back up, he was examining her closely, curiously. She raised an eyebrow, but he didn't bother to look ashamed.

"Macchiato, please."

She glanced down at the Les Amis shirt peeking out from under his red hoodie. "I seriously doubt the coffee Montparnasse buys is fair trade," she told him bluntly. He stared at her for a second and then laughed.

"At least it's not Starbucks," he told her.

"Thank God for that," she said wryly, grabbing the espresso and scooping it out. _Honestly, these activists._

"Anyway, fair-trade doesn't always mean a product is really fair-trade," he continued, absent-mindedly scratching his jaw. "More often than not, corporations jack up prices, stick on a 'fair-trade' label, and then pocket the difference. Or most of it."

"You don't say," she muttered, setting the finished macchiato out in front of him. He looked down at it for a moment, then back up at her.

"I thought it would be bigger." He picked it up the glass between his thumb and two fingers.

"A macchiato is a shot with only a few drops of milk. Lattes and cappuccinos have more." She let a smug grin quirk the corner of her mouth. "Clearly you don't know as much about coffee as you do about the injustices of international trade."

He smiled with good grace, fished a two-euro coin out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her, taking a sip of the macchiato. Éponine watched him closely to see if he would flinch or grimace, and he didn't, so that was a good sign. She was about to dismiss him with a "have a nice day" when he spoke again.

"So you're not much of an activist, but you hang around with Marius," he told her abruptly, thumbing away a tiny smudge of foam from the corner of his mouth.

_Ah. The real reason you emerged from your basement._

"I like Marius," she answered shortly, forcing down the urge to cross her arms. "I'm new to this side of the city. I'm trying to make friends."

"You could come hang out with all of us," he said with a shrug, taking another sip of his coffee and watching her over the rim. She couldn't tell what color his eyes were behind his spectacles—blue or grey—and it bothered her more than it should have, that she couldn't tell. "Even if you're not into the activism thing, Jehan starts talking in iambic tetrameter when he's tipsy, and sometimes we can get Joly to juggle."

Her stomach twisted. _Oh, monsieur_, she thought, looking down at her hands. _I'm not the one who's stolen your Marius away._

"I'm not sure I have much in common with you activist university students," she found herself saying and instantly regretting it.

"Hmm," he said, but didn't otherwise react. He drained the glass and handed it back to her. "Fair enough," he said, in a tone that she couldn't read. "If you change your mind, perhaps I'll see you tonight."

She half-smiled, but didn't say anything. He took a few steps towards the door before turning back around. "I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Enjolras."

"Just Enjolras?"

"To most people." He shrugged.

"Éponine," she answered. The schoolgirls in the corner were whispering tensely and actually glaring at her, but she ignored them.

"I hope I see you tonight," he said, retying his scarf and pushing out the door. She watched him stride out of side, presumably towards the bar entrance around the side.

_You hope you see Marius tonight_, she thought, a bit sourly, but found herself almost considering it.

If only to see Joly juggle.

* * *

A/N: More Enjolras! He should be turning up a bit more often now. =)


	7. vii

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

**Chapter 7**

* * *

It was always a delight to take out the garbage at the end of the day, especially when that entailed picking up the garbage people hadn't bothered to throw away themselves.

Pink and yellow slips from sugar packets were the worst offenders, followed by crumpled coffee-stained napkins, and then usually the odd newspaper or two. But tonight, newspapers were everywhere—there were probably six or seven on the table by the fireplace alone, if she bothered to gather them up and fold them into their rightful order.

But she hated touching them, hated the feel of them on her fingers, both grimy and gritty, so she snatched them up as quickly as possible and tried not to grimace. No sooner had she shoved an armful into the garbage than she saw another renegade sheet half-shoved under the sofa.

"What is _with_ all these damn newspapers tonight," she muttered, making conversation without meaning to as Montparnasse swept under the table behind her. She stepped on a corner of the paper to slide it out.

The headline shouted up at her:

_LEAKED: POLITICIANS IN BED WITH BIG BUSINESS_

She never would have picked it up before the Les Amis meeting, but now she did, if only out of curiosity, and because it reminded her of their anger, their hope. Enjolras had showed them all a newspaper then, too. What could it be about black words on a white page to inspire such passion, such ruthless idealism?

Montparnasse snorted behind her. "Yeah, some upset about rich people making some deal with other rich people."

She folded the paper in half to scan it. It was tricky to piece together—most of the article was a jumble of names of corporations and politicians and legislation that she didn't know (_ugh, it's like a soap opera)_—but it looked like politicians had been taking bribes, and a virus finally broke the news, spamming the inboxes of every member of Parliament and several major news outlets. Transaction numbers, foreign bank accounts, the lot.

"Experts are questioning whether the incident presages a resurgence in hacktivist groups like _Sans Visage, _which was shut down two years ago in an infamous display of police brutality." That was the last sentence on the first page; all the others were missing.

_People are willing to fight, to get thrown in prison for this shit. _She remembered Enjolras on the table, his words that burned like ice, and felt nothing.

She balled up the paper and tossed it in the garbage.

"Can I use your phone?" Payment cycle was up a few days ago, but she hadn't called to check on Gavroche yet.

"Who do you keep calling, anyway?" Montparnasse groused, putting a hand on his hip.

"I have used your phone exactly_ once_, don't bullshit me," she shot back, holding out her hand insistently and hoping he'd fall for the evasion technique. He narrowed his eyes and ran his tongue over his canine in a particularly disconcerting manner, but his eyes were already bright with alcohol—he kept a flask in his jacket pocket—so he handed it over.

Someone picked up on the second ring, before she could hang up.

"This 'Ponine?"

_Oh no._

"Dad." She wasn't leaning against the alley wall anymore, she was standing straight, tensed automatically.

"We've been missing you, girly." He was slurring slightly.

"I'm sure you have." She said it flatly, not bothering to hide her scorn. _Cut to the chase_. "Gav around?"

"Funny you should mention him—"

"Not that funny."

"—since he's been disappearing off and on lately."

She stilled for a moment, listening to the heavy breathing rattling through the phone. "Yeah?"

"What I can't figure is how he's never coming home hungry."

"You been getting my money?" she cut in.

He laughed raucously. "At least some of it."

"You know Gav can take care of himself," she said sharply. "He wouldn't have to go find his own food if you'd do what you're supposed to instead of spending it all on your own _shit_." She spit the last word, not daring to actually voice it, but knowing he'd catch on.

"You better watch your mouth"—she could almost feel her father's hot breath through the phone—"or you're gonna be in a lot of trouble."

"I'm doing this for Gav, alright? Not for Mom. Not for you."

"You better keep Montparnasse happy, yeah?"

He hung up before she could.

_Shit._

Éponine whirled and kicked the wall, and the pain felt good.

_Shit shit shit._

She stalked to the door and yanked it open. Montparnasse was standing right in front of it, hand poised midair as if to push it open.

"Shit!" she squealed. _Goddammit, woman._ She shoved past him to grab her coat and scarf hanging on the hooks.

"So I was wondering if you wanted to come with me tonight."

She tensed halfway through pulling out her coat collar. "Come with you?"

"See what I do after hours," he said, to her great relief. Pulling out his flask, he took a long draw, watching her with half-lidded eyes as she looped her scarf around her neck. "Since we had such a good time a couple weeks ago."

_Better keep him happy, 'Ponine._

"I had the worst hangover of my life the next day, and you know it," she told him, trying to keep it light.

"I wasn't exactly planning on hitting the bar again," he said, tucking the flask away and rolling his fingers.

"If you're asking me to come watch somebody beat the shit out of you at Fight Club, I'd rather not," she informed him sweetly, shoving her hands in her pockets and moving casually towards the door.

He leaned one hand against it. "Oh, I'd be doing the beating, trust me. And," he inclined his head so she could smell the vodka on his breath, "don't talk about Fight Club, remember?"

"Oh, right," she sighed. Her heart was pounding, but she put a hand on his chest and gently, firmly, pushed him back, off the door. "It's just that I already have plans to read some Russian literature tonight."

He grinned but stepped back. "Some light reading before bed?" She was halfway out the door but could easily hear the way his tongue curled around the last word.

"That Tolstoy, he's a genius," she tossed back, and stifled a shiver of relief when there was no answer except for his chuckling.

* * *

The door to the basement was unlocked when she tried it, so after glancing over her shoulder one last time for Montparnasse, she slipped inside and let the door quietly click shut behind her.

After a moment, her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she could see well enough by the light bleeding around the edges of the curtain at the bottom of the stairs to make her way down.

Enjolras looked over as soon as she brushed aside the curtain, jerking his head up as if he were finely attuned to everything in his immediate sphere of influence. He probably was that finely attuned, actually, judging by the way the others had clustered around him, tables and chairs dragged together, laptops open, books and papers scattered everywhere, but all oriented, somehow, towards him. He was pointing at something on his laptop screen with a pen, but half-smiled, a kind of pleased, surprised smile, when she came in.

He extricated himself from the labyrinth of chairs after saying something to the guy next to him wearing thin-rimmed glasses, who leaned across his seat to reach the laptop and take over the lecture. Rant. Whatever it was.

The rest of them pretended to keep listening, but it was obvious the way they snuck looks over their shoulders at her, as their fearless leader approached her.

_Well, it's free to look,_ she thought, lifting her chin as Enjolras approached.

"Sorry if I'm interrupting," she said before he could speak, stepping towards him.

"We're finishing up anyway," he told her, pushing up the sleeve of his sweatshirt to check his watch and _yep, even his forearms are ridiculous._ "Did you just get off work?" He backed towards the tables and gestured for her to follow.

"We close at eleven," she recited sardonically.

"And we meet on other nights," he said with a shrug. "You could come on one of your nights off."

"I work every night," she said evenly, daring him to question it. He paused, looking at her with his brow furrowed like he wanted to inquire, but then turned away.

"This is Éponine," Enjolras announced, and finally, everyone stopped sneaking glances to turn and look at her head-on. "You've already met Joly and Bossuet, yes? And Marius, who isn't here." He said the last with a slight curl to his lips.

"This," he said, gesturing to each, "is Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Feuilly, and Jehan." He clapped his hand on the shoulder of who-must-have-been Jehan, who she recognized as the brightly colored creature with a long braid she had glimpsed at the meeting. Combeferre was the slender one at the laptop with glasses, but other than that, it would take her awhile to learn.

"And Grantaire is passed out behind the bar," Jehan added, giving her a sunny smile. Tonight he was wearing jeans and a pastel sweater with a floral motif.

Enjolras pinched the bridge of his nose. From behind the bar, there came the sound of sleepy, snorting laughter that rapidly subsided back into silence.

"_Anyway_," Enjolras said, the slightest bit huffy, "for those of us who are here to accomplish things...Ferre?"

"We're good," he returned, cool gaze flickering to Éponine and then back to the computer. He resumed whatever speech he had been giving, something about constituencies and term limits.

Enjolras gestured towards another table with one hand and touched her elbow with the other, graciously not commenting on the way she flinched at the touch.

"So, you work for Montparnasse," he said, taking one of the chairs. She stared at him for a moment, glancing back towards the others, before joining him.

"It's quite the life, but wouldn't you rather be converting me to your activist ways? I heard a rumor you wanted to blow up the _Assemblée._"

A smile played around the corners of his mouth. "I'll keep it in mind. Right now all we're planning is a rally."

"I can check my planner if you give me a date."

"The date will depend on a lot of things," he said, frowning to himself, looking down at the table and drumming his thumb.

She waited for him to elaborate. Instead, he looked back up and asked, lightly, "So, why didn't you invite Montparnasse to come down with you?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Is this some kind of test? I already know you all don't get along."

"But you do?"

"Get along?" _Is this your idea of small talk? Because it is really fucking weird. _"Well, we haven't traded BFF necklaces yet or anything." Enjolras was still watching her evenly. "He was busy tonight, anyway," she muttered.

Something in her tone seemed to satisfy him. "Ah." There was a pause, and he looked down, tapping his thumb again. Then he leaned forward suddenly, as if on impulse, resting his chin on his clasped hands and peering at her earnestly. "What did you mean about working every night?"

"I work every night," she repeated flatly. In this light, she thought, his eyes behind his glasses looked grey—huge, inquisitive.

"But it's not as if you have the night shift. You work mornings, too."

She crossed her arms. "And you know this how?"

He bit his lip, just for a moment. "Marius mentioned it."

_Marius. _She kept her expression still. _So we're both looking for the same person._

"So," he prodded, "Thebes closes at eleven, you close up and leave at probably eleven-thirty on a good night. And then you're back in the morning by what, five-thirty? Seven days a week?"

"We don't open until noon on Sunday," she informed him sweetly, but there was steel in her voice.

He dragged his hand over his jaw. "Jesus Christ."

"Yep, that's why."

"Montparnasse is a skeevy bastard, Éponine," he told her, pressing his palms flat on the table, his gray eyes hardening to a sharp blue. "You know you're being labor-trafficked?"

"_Look_," she said, slamming her hands onto the table to mirror his and leaning in, which _definitely_ turned some heads at the other table, "I know _exactly_ what I'm doing. I'm not one of your 'oppressed' to make friends with."

"There's no shame in being victimized by the system," he told her, almost coldly.

"As far as I'm concerned, everyone gets screwed over one way or another," she hissed back. "So yeah, even though Montparnasse is a 'skeevy bastard' and there's an extensive list of people I would rather spend time with, and I spend about 88% of my week working, it's my life and my choices, and I get to make them."

She sat back heavily, exhausted by the words wrung out of her.

Enjolras eyed her like he wasn't ready to let it go, but didn't push it. "I'm sorry if I offended you. Honestly," he added as she snorted. "That wasn't my intention. Let me just ask you, though," he said, leaning in even closer. "Obviously activism isn't your thing. So why are you here? Why did you even come to the first visitor's night?"

"Free beer, remember?" He couldn't have forgotten that first impression, her climbing over the chair in search of booze, but he didn't react.

"Not good enough," he said calmly.

"I was lonely," she snapped, intending it to be sarcastic, unbelievable. It didn't quite come out that way.

He looked at her sharply, lips parting like a question. Heat surged into her face and she leaned back again, folding her arms like a challenge. His gaze flickered down at the movement, like he was assessing her body language.

Nobody in the room could have missed it when the curtain was yanked aside, and someone called out a "Hey!"

Marius stepped out of the stairway, holding Cosette's hand.

"I'm surprised you're all still here," he exclaimed. She couldn't look away as he drew Cosette up next to him, his hand on the small of her back, leading her towards the group. "This late, I thought it would just be Enjolras and Combeferre." She saw Enjolras shoot Combeferre a look. "And maybe Grantaire if he's passed out somewhere," he added.

"You knew we had a meeting tonight," Enjolras said stiffly.

"And most of the nights for the last two weeks," somebody—Bahorel, maybe?—muttered.

"Marius," said Combeferre carefully, "you know we have rules about bringing guests to the meetings.

"This is a terrible first impression, isn't it?" Cosette cut in quickly, smiling, but her embarrassment was obvious in her tone. "I'm so sorry, really. I'm Cosette, by the way, but I can meet you all later." She put her hand on Marius' shoulder to lightly tug him back towards the door.

_Does he even see me? _

"Like I said," Marius pressed, his voice tighter, "I didn't think you'd still be meeting this late."

"Well, we are," Enjolras said, an edge of irritation in his voice. "And you should probably be more concerned about making the meetings than showing up after."

"We're leaving," Cosette said firmly, pulling Marius back. He didn't follow.

"And why is it okay for Éponine to be here if I can't bring my girlfriend?" he continued.

Enjolras looked at her. She could feel his dawning comprehension, feel the pity in his eyes.

Combeferre was recovering the situation, stepping around the table to introduce himself, and the others grudgingly followed.

She wanted to shove her chair back and stand, to announce that she was leaving, to walk out and never come back.

She couldn't move.

"Éponine," Enjolras murmured. She tore her gaze from Marius to look at him. He was grim-faced, but his eyes were soft.

"Go get some sleep," he said. "You have an early morning."

She stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, and walked out, almost unnoticed.

* * *

A/N: School has been crazy! I hope the extra-long, action-heavy chapter somewhat makes up for it, yes? (This broke 14 pages in Word, y'all, CRAZY for me!) I also hope it's enough to tide you over for a bit, because school will continue to eat my life for another week or so. *is crying*

Thank you all so much for your words of encouragement and your enthusiasm. I'm just flattered and thrilled that you're enjoying the story, seriously (I couldn't believe it when the mind-blowingly talented Unicornesque put me on her fic rec list on tumblr (find her at youarethesentinels dot tumblr dot com). I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and we could all eat it together and I'm sorry I just can't hold myself back from making a Mean Girls reference. Suffice it to say I love you all, and thank you so, so much for reading!


	8. viii

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

**Chapter 8**

* * *

For several days, Éponine drifted to Thebes and home again, as if she had coalesced into the fog that filled the streets.

Work was the same. She didn't see anyone notable. None of the Les Amis came in, and if she thought she saw them hurrying by in the dismal grey outdoors, she didn't give it much thought.

The weather improved, slightly—it was still cold, but the brutal precipitation evaporated, so the walk from her apartment to Thebes (or vice versa) didn't leave her soaked and shivering. If she had taken the time to make her hair presentable, the weather wouldn't have ruined it for once, but she didn't bother—just mustered the effort to blow-dried it at night until it wasn't cold and sopping and then slept on it, so by mornings it was a frizzed and dented mess.

She tried to call Gavroche a couple of times, but he didn't answer, so she stopped trying. She didn't want to risk a chat with her father again, or Montparnasse's tenuous trust. It was becoming more difficult to keep him both a) appeased and b) at arm's length, and lately she just couldn't be damned to try and keep him happy.

His frustration was building, though. She could tell by the way he stalked off she didn't rise to his barbs, the way he muttered angrily to himself as he hauled out the garbage or shoved huge sacks of coffee beans onto the shelves. He glared stormily at her most of the time and seemed to get less pleasure out of ordering her to clean the bathroom.

In fact, Éponine had only snapped once, when he dropped a coffee mug on the floor right behind her, just to watch her flinch when it shattered. She didn't disappoint in that regard, but he probably hadn't expected her to whirl around and punch him across the ear.

He had stumbled back, wide-eyed but grinning, and her rage had been cold and terrible.

But growing up in a household with two alcoholic parents, you learned to fear the sound of glass breaking.

"Don't do that again," she hissed, but her anger was already thawing as her knuckles began to throb.

_What's wrong with you, stupid woman?_ she spat at herself, wanting to hold onto her anger, to let it boil up and then spit it out in Montparnasse's grinning face, but it subsided into dullness again.

Still, she made him get the broom.

She didn't want Marius to come, and she did, and she dreaded the thought of seeing him with Cosette but was terrified of seeing him alone.

So, naturally, he showed up alone one afternoon.

"Éponine?" His voice came floating over the counter.

She was halfway under the sink looking for a new bottle of hand soap and, for a moment, wasn't sure whether to crawl out or crawl in.

She sat back on her heels. She stood up.

"Oh!" he said, managing to look both disgruntled and relieved.

He was standing near enough to touch, if she leaned forward and stretched out her fingers to brush his shoulder.

"_Oh_?" she echoed. "It's not like I'm ever anywhere else."

He flushed, looked down. "That's true." And with that flush, something inside her flushed back.

_Goddammit. _

"We still have soy, if you want coffee. Not that you've been around to claim it," she told him, not quite ready to give up needling him. She couldn't suppress the grin quirking the corner of her mouth.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry," he sighed. "But I'll take a caramel latte if you don't mind making one for me." He pulled out exact change from his pocket, set it on the counter, and then leaned in, resting his folded arms on the counter, and that was it: she felt light and reckless in his earnest gaze.

_Make the damn coffee_, she scolded herself and jerked away to grab the espresso.

Marius looked guilty again.

"I, uh, need to apologize to you," he muttered, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck.

"Oh yeah?" She punched the espresso button on the machine. Regardless of the fluttery feelings in her stomach, she sure as hell wasn't going to give him an inch.

"About last week at the meeting," he muttered very fast. "I was rude and then you ran out before I got a chance to apologize."

"And it's my fault for running out?"

He looked startled. "It's my fault for being rude."

"And it's also your fault for ignoring me for a week," she pressed, snatching the espresso before it overflowed.

"And that too," he agreed hurriedly. "I have been really busy, though. I had this school project—and then there's Enjolras' thing, and—"

_Cosette_, she thought bleakly at the same time he said it, and digging the soymilk out of the back of the refrigerator gave her the perfect opportunity to roll her eyes in disgust as Marius kept going:

"She's seriously brilliant, that's why she's taking all the credit hours and meeting with the tutor—it's not, like, a remedial thing, she just wants to learn Greek—"

She banged the soymilk on the counter and then sloshed it into the steaming pitcher with unnecessary force. Little specks splattered everywhere.

"—so we just have to hang out when we can. But then _yesterday_ her tutor switched up their schedule, out-of-the-blue, which means she doesn't have Wednesday and Friday afternoons free anymore, so I can hang out with you sometimes." He beamed as if she should be pleased with this remark. "Not that you're my fallback or anything."

"_Except yeah, you're totally my fallback."_

She glared at the bubbles beading up on the surface of the steaming milk.

"Don't you think you're moving a little fast with _Cosette_?" Even the loud steamer couldn't quite mask the edge to her tone.

"You don't even know her," Marius muttered after a moment, looking down at his arms, and she felt a little bit bad but not bad enough to stop.

"And you've known her for how long, a month?"

"Cut it out," he retorted, more annoyed than angry, which made her even angrier, but she bit her lip, turned off the steamer, and reached for the caramel syrup.

"Enjolras thought you might come back to the meetings," he hedged.

_Enjolras already got whatever the hell it was he wanted from me,_ she thought, _which was the fact that I'm not the one seducing you away from his Great Cause_.

"Have _you_ even been going to the meetings?" she countered, but without malice, to see the way his posture relaxed.

"Yeah." She raised an eyebrow, and he made a protesting gesture. "Seriously! All of them. Almost. _Almost _all of them."

She allowed herself a smile and finished stirring his latte, handing it over, and pretending she wasn't disappointed when he took it without touching her fingers.

"I don't really understand what you do down there," she muttered.

Marius shrugged and looked into his latte. "Oh, you know. This and that. I already told you a little bit about the barricade project, right?"

"Something about blocking servers?" she said distractedly, looking for the rag to wipe down the machine.

"Well, yeah, for the good of the people," he intoned in a half-assed Enjolras impression that still made her snort. "And Courfeyrac is helping Jehan work on this online movement about the quinoa crisis."

"Quinoa?"

"The grain?" She stared at him blankly. "Well, anyway, it's kind of a fad and it's destroying the Bolivian economy. So they're doing that. And Bahorel's got his own thing going on, too, but then again, Enjolras might be in on that, I'm not sure."

He broke off to take a gulp of his latte, like he always did, and Éponine bit back a grin as he sputtered, like he always did, because it was still too hot to swallow.

"Dammit, quit laughing at me," he choked, which she took as invitation to laugh openly.

"Hey!" The door to the backroom banged against the wall, and she turned to see Montparnasse glowering. His eyes narrowed even more when he saw Marius. "This is a place of business, not a brothel, okay?"

Marius looked horrified, and Éponine stiffened, too.

"Technically, a brothel is a place of business, you dumbass, but you can go fuck yourself regardless," she said crisply.

"Oh my _god_," Marius moaned under his breath.

But Montparnasse only curled his lips into a smile, his eyes sparking. He saluted and yanked the door shut behind him.

"I should go," Marius muttered, gulping at his latte like he was trying to get his money's worth.

"Afraid Montparnasse is gonna kick your ass?"

"Should I be?" he asked between gulps. She shrugged.

"Eh, I wouldn't let him."

"You should be careful with that guy, Ep," Marius told her, seriously, wiping foam from his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Tell me something I don't know," she said frostily, and then relented. "Look, I'm fine." He was draining the dregs of his latte. "Are you sure you have to go?"

_Oh, why don't you try and make that sound a little more pathetic next time, Snow White._

"Yeah, Cosette's almost done with tutoring," he said, and then looked at her quickly as if regretting the words. "And there's a meeting later," he added. "And you should come!" he finished quickly.

_I am the literal definition of an afterthought_.

"We'll see," she told him, and then he came around the counter to hug her goodbye. She held herself stiffly so that she wouldn't sink into him and tried not to notice the way he smelled spicy and musty, like old man cologne.

Montparnasse strolled out of the back room minutes after, just as the sun was starting to set.

"We're closing early tonight," he announced to the small scattering of patrons, who gave him odd, confused looks but didn't question him, because even in an apron Montparnasse was an intimidating sight.

Éponine crossed her arms and leaned against the counter expectantly.

"You're gonna come see what I do in my free time," he told her.

"Oh, am I?" she said flatly.

"Yep," he answered, stretching his shoulders as the front door shut behind the last customer, cracking a grin.

She could have gotten out of it if she wanted to—there were a million ways to evade him—but Marius was still burning in her head. She pulled her apron off.

"Let's do it."

* * *

A/N: Here you are, lovelies! I'm hoping to have another chapter up tonight. Since that's how I roll when it comes to fanfiction: go ten days without writing a thing and then write 20 pages in one sitting. Oops.

I try to respond to reviews personally, but I wanted to say a special thanks to Meela, who leaves the kindest and most thorough reviews. Thank you so much! Hopefully some of your questions are being addressed as we go along. =)


	9. ix

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

**Chapter 9**

* * *

They had to drive to get there (in a scuffed white van parked a few streets over from Thebes that, as she told him, screamed "cokehead child molester") but their actual destination was down a series of deserted streets and narrow one-way alleys that eventually dumped them out at the sketchy area next to the river, where Montparnasse pulled up next to a flat-sided warehouse.

"You want my coat?" he asked, turning back towards her, one leg already out of the van. "It gets cold by the river at night."

"Uh, sure," she answered, and so he shrugged off the heavy black leather and threw it to her. It smelled too much like smoke, but it was warm, and she was grateful as soon as she hopped out and felt the wind coming off the river. She felt something heavy in one pocket and grinned—he had left his flask in it, and she definitely wasn't going to ask permission.

Then it past a slender, silent man at the door down a dim-lit hallway, and Éponine realized she could hear a far-off hum that grew louder as Montparnasse steered her forward, moving faster. They reached the door at the end of the hall and he tugged it open and the hum became a roar. Scattered across the warehouse were five or six chain-link partitions and, in each one, men were beating the _shit_ out of each other.

Her senses were assaulted from all fronts: the bleating fluorescents overhead and the wild, warring shadows cast from the fights; the thick, sour smell of sweat; the sounds of bone impacting flesh, the rattling of chain-link fences, and grunts and groans from all sides.

She yanked out the flask and took a long draw.

It was gin; not as ideal as whiskey but still better than vodka.

Montparnasse was distracted by a skinny man handing him what looked to be a large roll of bills, which he slipped into his front pocket (out of obligation to her Thenardier upbringing, she contemplating filching it later for the barest fraction of a second before remembering that death-by-slit-throat was not on her list of ways to leave the world).

He turned back to her and she didn't bother to hide the flask.

"Are you fucking insane?" Someone in the nearest fight was thrown against the side of the cage with a violent rattle, which punctuated her remark nicely.

He grinned rather smugly. "Don't tell me you're not impressed," he said, folding his arms in a way that stretched his absurdly tight black v-neck over his absurdly overworked arms and shoulders.

"Oh, no, it's definitely making an impression," she told him. There was a sudden outcry nearby as someone had thrown the blood-spitting man what looked to be a length of pipe, though his opponent, taller, broader, and oblivious to the bruises and abrasions on his bare chest, didn't seem threatened, just grinned and kept circling.

She pointed. "Is that allowed?"

"What, the pipe?" He snorted. "Seems like the other guy's okay with it." And it did, based on the way the broader man moved under the flickering fluorescents, throwing a punch to his opponent's side as he tried—and failed—to block with both hands clenched around the pipe, staggering back against the chain link again. But apparently weapon-like paraphernalia (or at least pipes) were against the rules, judging by the way someone shoved through the shouting crowd around the cage to demand the pipe.

Montparnasse grunted in a disappointed way and Éponine tossed him a mildly disgusted look.

Now utterly defenseless, the man cowered against the side of the cage, throwing up a halfhearted block or two against his opponent, but finally yelling out "_yield!" _The shriek carried through the warehouse, pierced the heated conversations and cheering and the noises of the other fights.

The broad man stepped back instantly, turning around to pump his fist in the air. Éponine couldn't tell if everyone was yelling or cheering but he didn't seem to mind, just bent to grab his crumpled shirt, strode out of the enclosure and grabbed the handful of bills extended to him.

"It's more fun when they go to knockout," Montparnasse muttered glumly. She shot him a glare.

"You're sick," she told him, and meant it, taking another drink of the flask just to piss him off, in case he noticed. "Besides, isn't that one of the rules of Fight Club?"

He slid his gaze over. "I thought we weren't supposed to talk about Fight Club."

"Pretty sure that doesn't count when we're standing in the middle of it," she scoffed, folding her arms to avoid flinching as there came a particularly agonized noise. Montparnasse licked his lips and smirked.

"You should probably be nicer to me," he said, unfolding his arms to slide his hands into his back pockets. "Considering you're my guest."

_I'm not __**your**__ anything, _she thought. _Just your employee, until the day comes when I walk out and never come back_.

She raised an eyebrow instead. "What, do you run this joint?"

"You could say I'm a stockholder," he replied with ill-concealed arrogance.

"I'd say I'm surprised, but I'm really not," she said, careful not to make the remark too dry.

He grinned and started to say something, but reply was cut off by the door banging as someone entered. They both looked back and she saw a young man glaring at the assembly with what Éponine instantly categorized as false bravado.

"Excuse me," Montparnasse said smoothly. "This shouldn't take long." The coiling and uncoiling of his muscles as he strode over the newcomer was disturbingly apparent.

The kid looked familiar, not because she had seen him before, but because she knew his type: guaranteed to add three or four years to his age if you asked him, corroborating the lie with too-big, poorly fitting clothing, already running from mistakes he had made too early in life. The kind who was desperate for attention now, but soon, would just be desperate for survival.

Montparnasse ambled over and the kid drew himself up, setting his jaw, but the illusion cracked when he was shoved up against the wall with Montparnasse's hand fisted in the front of his overlarge green jacket. He put up his hands in a weak gesture of protest, words obviously flying out of his mouth, but then Montparnasse slapped him across the face, and that was when she turned away.

Standing before her, taller, broader, and even more scraped up than he had looked from far away, was the winner of the last match. She _At least he put his shirt back on_, she thought, which was probably a good thing—he was intimidating enough with it on, scowling down at her, and if she were anyone else she probably would have reflexively taken a step back. He lifted his eyebrows expectantly.

Then she realized she recognized him.

"You were at the meeting," she said.

"I don't remember your name, either," he said bluntly. "Mine's Bahorel. What's in the flask?"

"Gin," she said, "and I'm Éponine." She glanced back to see if Montparnasse was still distracted, and he was, talking quietly into the kid's face, so she extended the flask. "Want some?"

"I'm not really a gin man," he said, but took it anyway, took a drink, winced—probably due to the open cut on his lip—and wiped his mouth before handing it back.

"You here to fight?"

She was halfway through a swallow of gin and almost choked. "Do I look like I'm here to fight?"

He shrugged warily. "You never can tell." The way his eyes flickered down her body was appraising instead of lewd. "You could do some damage, I bet." He looked back up. "You here with Montparnasse?"

She capped the flask and grimaced. "Only in the most literal sense."

Bahorel nodded, pursing his lips. "I'm not one to judge people for where they get their kicks, but he's kind of an asshole, yeah?"

She wasn't fast enough to stifle her snort, but Bahorel just grinned. "So," she recovered, "is this where you get your kicks, then?"

"There are worse ways," he said, his eyes drifting behind her to where Montparnasse was beating up the kids.

"I don't know, cage fighting seems pretty sketchy to me. Especially for one of the Les Amis."

His gaze snapped back to hers.

"You gonna tell Montparnasse?" He was tensed, less in an _I-am-about-to-punch-your-lights-out _way and more in an _I-will-punch-your-lights-out-if-you-come-between-me-and-the-door _way, which was probably nearly as intimidating.

"Calm down," she whispered harshly. "God, all of you Les Amis are paranoid nutjobs." He relaxed, marginally, still eyeing her warily. "_No_, I won't bring it up. All I meant," she pressed, "was that it's surprising to find one of you social justice sluts down by the river beating the shit out of someone for money."

"Social justice slut," he echoed, nodding thoughtfully. "I like that. I'll tell Feuilly to paint that on something." He looked back at Montparnasse for a long moment. "There are rules to this thing," he began again suddenly, low and harsh. "No weapons, no minors, and if somebody says they're done, they're done."

"Right." She laughed shortly. "And I assume everyone always follows the rules."

He frowned, then let out a frustrated grunt.

"What?" she said, but he only shook his head, looking back to where another fight was starting up in the cage he had won in. Two men, one who looked about fifty but was impressively built, and the other a twenty-something with a swagger in his step, were dropping their jackets and shoving inside. Just then, Montparnasse shouldered by, all but manhandling the kid to the cage.

"Hold it!" he called. "This one's going now." One shove between the shoulderblades and the kid stumbled in. He caught his balance before he fell and yanked off his too-large coat. Beneath it, he was pale and skinny in a thin white undershirt. At Montparnasse's word, the cocky younger man left the cage and slammed the door behind him.

"_Shit_," said Bahorel softly, and when she looked up the lines of his face were tightly drawn, and his fists were clenched, regardless of the fact that they were already skinned and battered. "He's got no business fighting," he muttered tersely. "Shit. He's roadkill."

The older man cracked his knuckles and dropped into fighting stance, which the kid, clumsily, tried to mirror.

It would be wrong to say the fight was over mercifully quickly, because mercy had no part in it.

For weeks after, Éponine saw the kid's wild fists behind her eyelids, saw the mouthfuls of blood he spat out, saw his skinny limbs twitching spastically on the concrete floor as he tried to pull himself up.

They dragged him out, and the older man was given his winnings amidst the cheering.

"Montparnasse should have called that about ten seconds in," Bahorel hissed under his breath, following it with a stream of curses. "Sick freak."

Something Marius had said about Bahorel's project clicked.

"You're here to bring it down," she breathed.

To his credit, he barely reacted, just slid his gaze over to her without relaxing his jaw. He didn't say anything.

"This is your project, isn't it?" she pressed. "God, you _are_ a social justice slut."

"And I thought my days of kicking Pontmercy's ass were over," he muttered darkly, shaking his head.

"Is that a yes?" she prodded.

"You can't prove anything," he growled. "I am an active participant here. You should see my winnings."

"I'm sure your winnings are very impressive," she told him. He looked at her, sharply, and she gave him a wry look. "Don't worry. I think you're an idiot, but I'm not gonna tell anybody." Then she remembered something else Marius had said. "Is Enjolras here, too?" _And oh, isn't that a hilarious thought: Enjolras, here._

"No," he said after a moment, giving her an odd look before poking at the bruising knuckles of one hand. "But he thought you might show up at some point."

_Seriously? _

_Goddammit._

"I hate being predictable," she said, a bit tightly.

Bahorel snorted softly. "Oh, I wouldn't say he thinks you're predictable," he muttered. "Enjolras is just..." he paused. "Observant." He grimaced as a scab split and, licking his other thumb, swiped the blood away.

She sighed. "Well, you probably shouldn't try and overthrow Fight Club without some kind of backup."

"Oh man, what a great movie, right? 'Do I give you the ass or the crotch?'" She stared. "On the plane? At the beginning? Never mind. Feuilly's here, too."

She didn't remember Feuilly, but she took his word for it, nodding.

"Also, as far as backup goes..." he trailed off meaningfully, flexing the muscles of his arms and shoulders and chest. She chortled.

"Full of yourself, aren't you?" The words slipped out before she could bite them back.

Bahorel only grinned. "I know my assets," he proclaimed. "Trust me, they don't keep me around for my brains."

They both watched as another fight started up. "Don't kick Marius' ass," she said after a moment.

"Fine," Bahorel said. "But let me know the instant you change your mind."

A/N: It's quite possible we have officially left the coffeeshop AU behind. Everything is lattes and poetry and suddenly Bahorel is cage-fighting? I have lost control of my life.

My apologies in taking so long to get it up. An unexpected academic…situation (*shifty eyes*) came up midway through the week. Thank you all for sticking with me!

Next chapter, there will be more Enjolras.


	10. x

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

**Chapter 10**

* * *

The next payday was a bitch.

And it was unfair, really, that the biweekly occasion that, by all rights, should have been one of the highlights of Éponine's dismal existence sucked so utterly and completely, but there it was.

First, she'd had to practically beg Montparnasse to let her use his phone—he had gotten cocky since she went with him to the cage-fighting, and seemed to take her exasperated demands as flirtatious encouragement, and yeah, _that_ definitely needed to stop before someone's balls were permanently damaged by someone's knee.

She had managed to get hold of Gavroche on the payphone (and yeah, it was Friday during school hours, but that was hardly surprising—she was just glad enough he was home).

He had grown more resentful since the last time she called, though.

"I hate it here," he muttered.

"Is Mom still drinking?" She coughed, pulling the receiver away to catch the sound in her elbow. A niggling pain burned in her breastbone. _Great._

"Mom's _always_ drinking," he bit back. There was a pause. "Not as much lately," he added sullenly.

She took a deep, relieved breath that turned into another cough, this one reigniting the burn of the last one and making her double over with its force. Dimly, she clung to Montparnasse's phone, knowing if she dropped it on the pavement there would be hell to pay. "I'm mailing the check today," she finally rasped. "Don't run off, okay?"

He snorted. _I know what it's like, _she wanted to scream at him, _I've been their child longer than you, but you're too young to be on the streets_. She wanted to shake him. "I'm doing this for you."

"You're full of it, Éponine," he snarled. It took her a second to realize the line had gone dead.

_Little shit! _She stared down at the phone, half-tempted to call back. But even if he were inclined pick up—and he wouldn't be—he was more than likely three streets over on his skateboard by now.

She would mail him half the check, but her head was beginning to throb, and she wasn't in the mood to cajole him out of a temper tantrum when she honest-to-God felt like throwing one herself.

"I need the day off," she announced to Montparnasse after she stomped back inside. He picked up his phone from where she had slammed it on the counter.

"I'll take that under advisory," he said slyly, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

"I'm not in the mood for diplomatic negotiations," she snapped. "I've got shit to do and I'm not feeling good."

"Foul-mouthed this morning, aren't we?"

"Shut the fuck up," she growled, and the elderly woman at the nearest table widened her eyes over her romance novel. "Do you want graphic details about my period? Because there is some serious shit going down in my uterus and I do _not_ have time to deal with yours."

(It was a lie—she'd had her period last week, and hardly ever got cramps, but Montparnasse probably wouldn't give a shit about a cough. He could, on the other hand, be counted on to turn abruptly squeamish in the face of Girl Stuff. When he paled slightly, she counted it a victory.)

"You get the morning off," he said brusquely, flicking the side of the grounds basket to settle the espresso.

"Don't be an ass," she snapped. "I hardly—"

"I have my own shit to do this afternoon," he cut in smoothly, flicking on the steamer to drown out whatever she said next. She glared. "Be back by 1:30," he said, loudly, over the steamer, and with a saccharine smile. "Maybe you can track down some aspirin before then."

She didn't give him the satisfaction of flipping him off—though it would have satisfied _her_ immensely—just yanked open the door to the storeroom hard enough to bang into the wall.

* * *

By the time she deposited her check and waited in line at the post office for the better part of half an hour, Éponine had developed a rather insistent pounding headache, too, which made her act slightly less than pleasant when the bustling elderly woman at the counter inquired smilingly if she wanted special Valentine's Day stamps for her letters.

"_No_," she growled with more vehemence than was absolutely necessary. The woman's eyebrows went up in an infuriatingly knowing way, which made Éponine want to hurl herself over the counter, grab her by the collar and tell her _very calmly _that_no, _she wasn't bitter about being young and single—well, she was, but that was beside the point—but that she was battling an absolutely _killer_ headache and a boss who was a complete shithead, and don't even get her _started_ on the utterly bewildering behavioral patterns of the boys in the bar downstairs.

Instead, Éponine doubled over, coughing directly over the handful of coins she had just laid on the counter. The woman looked at her with a vague distaste that reminded Éponine of the novel-reader in Thebes, earlier.

_I guess it's my day for pissing off old ladies_, she thought grouchily, pushing back out into the chill.

As it turned out, it was really just her day in general.

Because it was grocery day, too, or at least it desperately needed to be grocery day, considering that all she had left in her flat was a lump of molding baguette, a jar of Nutella that was really technically empty but she just couldn't bear to throw away yet, and exactly _one_ packet of instant noodles.

But the noodles were shrimp-flavored, which she had bought on a whim and ended up hating, and Éponine simply did not think she could bear to go home at midnight and face shrimp-flavored noodles.

She just _really _hated the shrimp-flavored noodles.

_Goddammit._

And so, to market.

She ducked in the first grocery store she saw on the way back towards Thebes, since she didn't have time to make it all the way back to the store she usually used, and was instantly greeted by the Valentine's Day display, a vomitous riot of red roses and pink hearts. In her own grocery store, she at least knew how to avoid the cards and the gift baskets and the displays of specially labeled champagne.

_Great, now I'm going to have to find everything, _she grumbled silently, picking up a basket at the front and not bothering to hide her wince as someone crashed their cart into another one, sending the metallic ringing throbbing through her head. _Who knows where they keep their goddamned saltine crackers in this goddamned establishment._

The goddamned saltine crackers were with the rest of the crackers, as it turned out, in the same aisle as the chips and pretzels and other sundry salty goods, and Éponine had grabbed a box of those, three baguettes (they would get a little stale before she could finish them, but it couldn't be helped when one didn't have time for grocery shopping) and practically an armful of ramen noodles in garish packaging, chicken- and beef-flavored only, before she turned a corner and found herself in the produce section.

Fresh produce, in February, in Northern France, could be counted on to be overpriced already, and, for an individual who mailed off approximately 80% of her post-rent paycheck to her parents and brother, it was almost certainly out of the question.

But—_strawberries._

She was standing in front of the display before she knew what happened, looking down at the strawberries in little green baskets with handles that were actually so cute as to be irritating.

But the strawberries in them were gleaming red and delicious and they were small, which meant they were probably sweet, too. The sign above them proclaimed a price that was somewhere below _are you fucking kidding me_ but still beyond the realm of _sure, I'll take a carton!_

Éponine looked at her basket. _I could just not get Nutella this time_, she reasoned with herself. But it wasn't really sound reasoning, because she didn't have the money for Nutella, anyway—last time she bought it, she'd had to choke down the stale baguettes they sold for quarter-price on the third day to go with it.

Still.

Her hand was already hovering over the basket nearest her when someone else's basket butted into what was definitely her personal space. And then _stayed _there. Presumably while whoever-it-was took their time inspecting the strawberries.

Éponine snatched her hand back, irritated. She eyed the person's basket for a moment. Several cartons of grape tomatoes. A bulk-size bag of green lentils. Organic milk. Flaxseed.

_Flaxseed._

She glanced up to shoot a glare at the pretentious person who so casually invaded her personal space with such absurd groceries, but, in shocked surprise, ended up dissolving into another coughing fit.

_Ow_, she thought, burying her mouth in her elbow to smother the cough as her lungs burned anew.

"You should probably get that checked out," said Enjolras.

Her annoyance had cooled while she practically hacked her lungs out, but that comment brought it all back.

She gave him a slightly frosty look. "I'll survive." She wanted to snap that she didn't have the time to go see a licensed medical professional, but her head was throbbing and terseness suited her.

She wished she had noticed him sooner. He wasn't wearing red, that day, or she might have.

He nodded in a way that said _I'm pretending not to be skeptical._

Someone opened the door to the freezers and Éponine shivered. _Dammit. _She looked back at the strawberries so she wouldn't have to look at him, who, unlike every other person on the planet, still looked good under shitty fluorescent lighting. The lighting did, however, reflect off his glasses with something of a glare, which somewhat marred the effortless aesthetic she supposed he was striving for.

She pretended to study the strawberries for a moment before realizing that he was looking at her basket.

Crackers. The cheapest baguettes they sold. About fifteen packets of ramen noodles. Cheap, empty calories.

She was flushing hotly before she could help herself, switching the basket to the other hand. Not that she cared what someone thought of her groceries, even if that someone were Enjolras, who probably never got sick and who bought things like lentils and flaxseed and probably had dedicated entire Les Amis meetings to the importance of leafy greens and legumes.

_Goodbye and enjoy your fiber_, she thought, about to mutter something along those lines and make an escape, but he spoke first.

"If you're sick, you should probably get oranges instead," he told her, neatly snagging a carton and carefully tipping it to examine the bottom. "They have more Vitamin C."

"I like strawberries better," she retorted, but her grip on her basket had relaxed, slightly.

He half-smiled and deposited the carton in his basket, moving a bag of spinach aside to make room at the bottom. "Well. It's a good sale."

For a moment she was struck with the utter absurdity of the situation—that she had seen Enjolras standing on a table brandishing a newspaper and decrying tyranny (or something that sounded equally stuffy), and she had run into one of his fellow activists at something that basically passed for Fight Club in a sketchy warehouse by the river, and here they were in the grocery store, discussing the price of strawberries.

"You should go home and drink some Echinacea tea," he added, turning away from the strawberries. "That's what Combeferre always tells me to do."

"I can't," she said, ignoring the prickle of irritation that came from his obvious love for dispensing advice. "I have work."

At that, he clenched his jaw and looked as if he would very much like to say something else, and Éponine would frankly have _loved_ for him to tell her that she was being labor-trafficked _one more time_.

"Well," he said, frowning, "just try and take it easy."

_Take it easy? _She stared blankly, and he looked slightly embarrassed.

"Don't go anywhere else after work," he added by way of recovery.

She thought he was referring to the meeting downstairs (_what day of the week is it, even?_) but he gave her a significant look. She realized Bahorel must have told him about the cage fights. The way he was looking at her, grey-or-blue eyes brilliant even through his glasses, made her wonder if he was sizing her up, trying to picture her watching the fights, pitying her for having to go to work with a nasty cough.

He touched her arm lightly. "Echinacea tea," he said, nodded in farewell, and then disappeared around the next aisle.

She realized, very belatedly, that behind the bag of spinach in his basket there had also been a bottle of champagne.

She definitely did _not_ wonder who the champagne was for.

* * *

A/N: Nothing much to say here, except that I had planned more for this chapter and it ended up being longer than I anticipated, so the odds of another chapter getting posted SOONER rather than later are good. And I'm also sorry it's been so long. *cringe*

Also, I do apologize for the extra-amount of profanity in this chapter. Pissy-Éponine, you know.

Finally, I realized that this was originally categorized under Brick-'verse, and it really is musical-based. So yes, I switched it over. Hopefully that didn't freak everyone out!


	11. xi

**title**: gray or blue  
**fandom**: les misérables  
**pairings**: enjolras/éponine  
**rating**: t  
**summary**: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

* * *

**Chapter 11**

* * *

With Montparnasse gone that afternoon—he had been aggressively drumming his fingers on the counter, twirling his keys with the other hand, when she strolled in through the backdoor at 1:29—she was blissfully alone.

Well, alone to man the espresso machine and halfheartedly bus deserted tables while holding a wad of tissues to her nose. Traffic was slow but it kept her busy enough, though customers didn't seem to stay very long, today—possibly due to the fact that she kept coughing into the crook of her elbow.

_There are almost definitely Health Code regulations about this kind of thing, _Éponine thought grouchily after one of the convent girls from down the street took her con panna between one painstaking thumb and forefinger, an excruciatingly pained expression on her face. She was about 98% certain she shouldn't lawfully be working food service right now. She was even surer that Montparnasse wouldn't give a damn.

Her cranky irritation from earlier gradually waned as her cough thickened and deepened and her muscles began tensely aching. The group of convent girls finally left, giggling and leaving behind a table of half-demolished sugar packets and chewed coffee stirrers, but Éponine couldn't bear to push herself off the counter and trudge over to clean up the mess.

Instead, she made herself a cup of mint tea and set it on the counter, folding her arms and leaning in so that the steam curled, warm and wet, into her lungs when she inhaled. The morning already seemed like a strange dream—the post office, the grocery store, Enjolras and the strawberries.

She furrowed her brow slightly. And the champagne. That was an oddity.

_Maybe not, though_, she realized. Sure, every time she had seen him, he had given every indication of being a workaholic type, fanatically devoted to his causes—for Christ's sake, he hadn't even been talking to anyone at the visitors' meeting, and he was the leader of the damn Amis, shouldn't he put in some effort to ingratiate himself?

But the point stood that he was, well, attractive.

She snorted and watched the mint tea tremble in her mug.

_Really_ attractive.

So if somewhere, in the life he lived outside the bar downstairs, he shared a bottle of champagne with someone for Valentine's Day, it shouldn't surprise her.

Though the champagne itself was mildly surprising. She would have pegged him as the dry red wine type.

An idle thought regarding what he planned to do with the strawberries made her face flush, and she straightened abruptly and cleared her throat to no one in particular. The only two customers were two students sitting at opposite ends of the café, quietly typing away on their laptops.

The shift in position sent whispery aches all over her skin. She smothered a groan and shoved into the back room to hunt for pain medication. Who knew what Montparnasse had stashed back there.

She was kneeling on the floor, rifling through a box of junk in search of pill bottles with absolutely no luck—dead calculators, mysterious electronic cables, mismatched playing cards, but no ibuprofen in sight—when someone knocked cautiously at the back door.

Several options presented themselves.

One, she could ignore the knock until they either went away or came in through the front door like a normal person would have.

Two, she could yell at whoever it was to fuck off, which would be satisfying but potentially less wise, if they came in through the front door and turned out to be a less-than-savory character. (She considered that the knock had been meek; then again, it had been at the back door.)

The knock came again.

Three, she could open the door and let the cards fall where they may.

As soon as she opened the door, Bossuet and Joly noticeably relaxed.

"We _do_ have a front door, you know," she told them, a bit huffily, though to be fair, Bossuet's last experience with the front door had been less than positive.

"We can't risk a run-in with Montparnasse," Bossuet whispered.

"Well, he's not in this afternoon, so I guess it's your lucky day." She finished with a sudden cough that she quickly smothered with her arm, and both of them paled slightly: Joly at the cough, Bossuet at the mention of luck. She remembered, too late, an offhand remark Marius had made about Bossuet's luck and apologized by stepping back to let them inside.

Joly shifted his weight warily as she shut the door and turned.

"If you're this desperate, there _are_ other cafés," she began, and Bossuet brightened visibly at the mention of coffee, but Joly broke in.

"Oh, we're not here for coffee," he laughed nervously. Ah. Not for coffee her germ-infested hands had prepared. Not that she could really resent his reluctance.

"Well then—"

"Let me see your tongue," Joly said.

She gaped. "What—"

"Wider," he insisted, and she obeyed, dumbly, He had already procured a small flashlight from his pocket and was shining it into her mouth, still standing a good few feet away.

"Can you even see anything?" Bossuet whispered, and Joly told him to hush.

Éponine snapped her mouth shut and crossed her arms. "May I ask what it is about my mouth that has you so fascinated?"

"Consider it the most respectful, professional interest of a medical student," he said, blushing and grinning with good grace.

"_And_ the interest of concerned friends," Bossuet cut in. He twisted his mouth sympathetically. "Enjolras told us you were sick."

"Also I just like using my flashlight," Joly added.

"Enjolras told you—"she broke off. That was unexpected but hardly worth dwelling on. "And you risked your own health and wellbeing to come check in on me?"

"After preemptively fortifying our immune systems with zinc and saltwater gargles, yes," said Joly, and Bossuet looked a bit sick. Probably due to the memory of the saltwater gargle. "So what are your symptoms?" Joly asked, flicking the flashlight on and off.

She walked backwards and leaned against the desk they kept for paperwork. "Uh, cough, runny nose, and I'm starting to feel achy, too." She blew her nose in demonstration. "So how much time do I have?"

Joly rubbed the end of his nose with the flashlight. "It'll hopefully run its course in three or four days," he began, and she bit back a smile at the way he had missed her meaning. "Although it would go faster if you could rest." He gave her a mildly stern look.

It didn't rankle as much as it did from Enjolras, but Bossuet still punched him in the shoulder when she narrowed her eyes. "Don't bother her about that," he hissed.

"I'm just saying," Joly muttered back. "_But_," he continued to her, "since you can't, we brought you an assortment of lozenges, sprays, medicated lotions, syrups, et cetera." He paused. "Please medicate responsibly."

"Also some echinacea teabags." Bossuet brandished a paper grocery bag that crinkled and rattled promisingly.

She eyed it for a moment, still reeling from the list Joly had rattled off and wondering hopelessly how much it all cost; when she checked at the store, even stretching her inflexible budget for one box of echinacea tea would have snapped it.

She swallowed, felt the sore burn in her throat. "Just the tea," she rasped, holding out her palm.

They exchanged an infuriatingly knowing look, and she shook her hand insistently. "_Just the tea_."

"You don't—we—" Bossuet began.

"Echinacea hasn't actually been medically proven to reduce the symptoms or length of the common cold," Joly interrupted desperately, but broke off when Éponine fixed him with a terrible glower. A glower diminished only slightly by her dripping nose. With a sigh, he reached into the bag and dug around until he produced a pink box, handing it over with a rueful flourish.

She nodded shortly in thanks, chewing on her lip, trying not to look at the bag, oh-so-tempting in Bossuet's hand.

"Do you want coffee, since you're here?" she asked stiffly. _Since I don't have any other way to pay you back. _

"Oh," Joly faltered, looking at Bossuet again. "Um, well. I'm not—we aren't—"

"Or you could make yourselves tea. Or take a pastry, which I promise not to touch, breathe on, or look at," she said, quirking an eyebrow.

"Come on, Joly," said Bossuet, nudging his elbow.

"Well." Joly had already taken a step forward, but he hesitated again. "Montparnasse is out today?"

"So he promised," she half-growled.

"Thank you, Éponine, we will stay for tea," said Bossuet. "Come along, Joly."

They followed her into the kitchen, where she pointed out the teabags and the hot water dispenser. Joly loaded his with a hearty dollop of honey, Bossuet stirred in two brown lumps of sugar, and Éponine made herself a cup with the echinacea, left plain because it's not like she could taste much, anyway.

And that was how she found herself leaning against one side of the front counter with two university boys leaning against the other side, talking about romance.

It began when Bossuet, in an admirable attempt to make conversation, asked if Éponine had plans for Valentine's Day. She grimaced and Joly groaned.

"You _had _to bring that up," said Joly, viciously stirring his tea.

"Some people like Valentine's Day," Bossuet defended himself. "Jehan likes Valentine's Day. So does Courfeyrac. And maybe Éponine does."

"Enjolras does, apparently," she muttered. "But no, _Éponine_ will be relieved when this nauseating holiday is over."

"It can be kinda over-the-top," said Bossuet helpfully. "What with all the pink." He looked down. "Especially if you once had a bad allergic reaction to Pepto-Bismol and seeing that color everywhere triggers all sorts of unfortunate flashback episodes."

Joly patted his hand sympathetically and then turned to Éponine. "Why do you say Enjolras, though?"

"Oh," she said, annoyed with herself for bringing it up. "I saw him buying champagne today." She shrugged. "He doesn't seem like the type to go at a bottle of champagne alone. I assumed he was seeing someone."

"Really? Champagne?" said Bossuet. He and Joly were grinning and elbowing each other.

"I knew it," whispered Joly exuberantly. Éponine straightened and raised her eyebrows expectantly, which caught his attention. "In answer to your question, no, Enjolras is not the type to drink alone, or even with anybody else, really, and to our knowledge he is not seeing anyone, man or woman. For that matter, none of us really has any idea which it would be, but there is quite the betting pool for the day when we find out."

"He's not really _into_ anything except his causes, if you know what I mean," stage-whispered Bossuet.

Now _that _was surprising.

"So the champagne is for…"

"Courfeyrac," Joly said gleefully. "Gotta be. He's Enjolras' flatmate, and he and Jehan have had a very secretive _thing_ going on lately. Ha! Bahorel owes me drinks for this."

"To get back to the point," Bossuet interrupted, "Enjolras loves Valentine's Day so much that he decided to celebrate by not cancelling the Amis meeting."

Joly deflated. "Asshole," he muttered. "As if this whole thing weren't complicated enough."

Bossuet shot him a glare, but it was too late—Éponine's curiosity was already piqued.

"Why, do _you_ have plans for Valentine's Day?"

"We're going on a date tonight," Bossuet said glumly, and this time Joly shot him a glare. Éponine stared.

"Not _us_," Joly insisted. "Me and my girlfriend. And Bossuet. At the same time."

"_My_ girlfriend," Bossuet muttered darkly. They refused to look at each other.

Éponine kept staring. "Are you sure Valentine's Day is the best time to untangle this relationship issue?"

"It's what Musichetta wants," sighed Joly.

"We've learned not to challenge that," added Bossuet. They exchanged another look and then returned to staring down into their teas.

Éponine hid a small smile behind her own mug. Who could have predicted the complex sexual politics of Les Amis?

Actually, quite a few people could have.

Nobody, however, could have predicted the unexpected reappearance of Montparnasse in Café Thebes.

He announced himself with a metallic bang from the back room, the sound of someone carelessly slamming the door.

Bossuet and Joly were both as white as paper. Joly had frozen with his mug halfway to his lips.

"_Get out," _Éponine hissed at them. From the back, there was a clatter as Montparnasse (presumably) tripped over the box of junk Éponine had left lying out, followed by a shouted expletive.

_That_ got them going. Joly grabbed Bossuet by the shoulder and bolted, shoving both of them out of the shop, hauling Bossuet to his feet when he stumbled and almost fell.

The front door clanged shut just as Montparnasse burst in and asked, in a dangerously soft voice, exactly what she'd been up to in the back room.

Éponine turned around and sneezed on his shoes.

* * *

It was the slowest part of day, when the afternoon crowds went home for dinner but before the night owls came in, and the café was nearly empty.

Éponine was wiping down a recently vacated table when a cold breath of wind from the door announced someone's entrance. She glanced up.

Fading sunlight caught his hair as he shut the door behind him, impossibly radiant even in his red zip-up sweatshirt and t-shirt. Enjolras. And of course, it _would_ be Enjolras, the only Ami alone on February 13 because he was too stubborn to cancel the meeting on Valentine's Day, and now the rest of them were off dating each other while he hesitated in the door of Café Thebes.

Enjolras nodded at Éponine, like his presence in the establishment was completely normal and not almost totally unprecedented, and approached the counter. Behind it, Montparnasse was tinkering with the refrigerator.

Montparnasse.

Enjolras.

She froze.

But evidently, Montparnasse either didn't care who Enjolras was or, unbelievably, he had no idea. All he did was poke his head over the counter for a moment and then duck back down.

"_Éponine_," he called, meaningfully. She slammed the rag onto the table and ground her teeth. Bastard was still punishing her for taking off that morning. And possibly sneezing on him. She cursed him under her breath and dragged herself over. _He_ was behind the counter, it should have been his job to take the orders when she was cleaning, and she certainly didn't want to give Enjolras, great leader of the downtrodden, another reason to pity her. He probably had enough of a hero complex.

The great leader of the downtrodden in question was primly studying the menu board and not involving himself in the dispute.

"Sorry," she muttered in a _he's-an-asshole _tone, tossing the rag into the sink, pumping the soap dispenser twice to wash her hands. "What'll it be?"

"Macchiato," he replied, coin already in hand.

"Same as last time?" She turned on the hot water and cocked an eyebrow, still remembering his reaction from last time. "You don't want something bigger?"

He didn't glare. He didn't laugh, either, but he half-smiled easily enough. She was startled, again, by his light eyes, sharp and bright even behind his glasses.

"I like the challenge of unfamiliar things," he said. Swallowing, she finished drying her hands, took the coin, and plinked it into the cash register. He watched her reach for the espresso. "And it was good last time."

She took it as a compliment.

They didn't talk after she gave him the macchiato, although when she used the grinding of the espresso machine as an opportunity to cough into her elbow, his jaw tightened as if he very much wanted to say something.

He didn't, though, just accepted the coffee, took a seat by the window and pulled out a thick, ripped-up paperback and a massive black three ring binder, duct taped together, barely containing the papers spilling out of it.

And then he read. That was all. He didn't look around, didn't even move except to shift the position of his legs or tap his pen against his glasses, which, she decided, must have been a nervous habit of his. He stayed long after the macchiato was gone, reading the _Republic_ (she snuck a glance when she was wiping the next table) and taking notes in his binder. Every so often, he would grab a shred of paper—a yellow post-it, a multicolored brochure, a scrap of lined notebook paper—and bookmark a page.

The shop seemed unnaturally quiet that evening, the silence buzzing in her ears (or maybe that was the congestion, but either way, it was unpleasant). Every time she coughed it was brutally loud, and her head started throbbing fuzzily. Sitting behind the counter on a stool, she crossed her arms and rested her chin on top, idly watching Enjolras read. She wondered if he was actually thinking about Plato or if he was thinking about all his friends who were getting laid tonight.

Éponine buried her chin in the crook of her elbow to muffle her snort, and then it was easy, so easy to stay there, to let her head fall sideways against her arm, her eyes drift shut. She would open them if someone came in...she was just resting...

The back door clanged shut and she jerked, falling forward off the stool to half-sprawl over the counter. In the back room, Montparnasse was whistling to himself, banging boxes around.

Enjolras was gone, but his macchiato glass had been placed carefully on the counter in front of her.

* * *

A/N: The 'worst fanfiction author ever' award? Oh gosh, you shouldn't have! *blushes*

I was starting to get in over my head with this fic, which is ridiculous, I know, but it's my first long fic and there's a lot I'm learning along the way! I really do have the best readers, thank you for your eternal patience. You are all very kind. Hopefully you're still here.

Hayley let me message-spam her to verbally process exactly where the fic is going, so I have some clarity of purpose again and won't have to take an unplanned 3.5 week hiatus.


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